Greater Manchester Care Record saves hours of clinical treatment time

The Greater Manchester Care Record has cut appointment times by 15 minutes per patient – saving clinicians’ hours of vital treatment time.

Powered by Graphnet’s shared record solution, Greater Manchester (GM) Care Record has become a major digital resource for the local area. Close to 11,000 frontline users access it every month to help care for more than 108,000 patients.

The GM Care Record enables GPs, doctors, nurses and care practitioners to access up-to-date medical records, care plans, test results and prescribed medications by collating the information held by multiple health and care settings.

Not only does it mean valuable time is saved by patients not having to repeat information, but it also ensures that care decisions are well informed.

Guy Lucchi, digital innovation director at Health Innovation Manchester and the Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership, said: “We’ve had remarkable success since we accelerated the development and deployment of the GM Care Record. We’ve increased the number of patient records on the system and the number of frontline users accessing vital information to inform clinical decisions in a timely manner.”

At the start of the Covid pandemic, the development of the GM Care Record was fast-tracked to support the region’s Covid response. Rapid progress to a single joined-up care record was made in weeks and it was quickly deployed as part of the digital response plan.

Lucchi added: “It’s enhancing the way we deliver care by enabling us to develop our understanding of our population and their health needs, so we can target resources and services and tackle some of the health challenges we face across the city region.”

Enhancements to the platform have seen the introduction of a Covid Oximetry@Home platform to support Covid patients who can directly input oximetry readings into the electronic record. In addition, Graphnet’s remote monitoring feature has been extended to the development of the MyMaternityCare app for blood pressure and glucose monitoring, plus digital heart failure care plans and an app to support patients with cardiovascular disease.

Brian Waters, chief executive of Graphnet, said: “It’s been fantastic supporting Greater Manchester to establish the record as a major digital enabler for care across the region. I’m delighter this partnership is driving forward at such pace and we are looking forward to working with our GM partners to take the care record from strength to strength.”

Clinical and system leaders from Greater Manchester recently took part in a Digital Health webinar to share their experiences of deploying the care record and their future development plans.