Scotland Introduces Shared Care Record

Dumfries and Galloway NHS is building an electronic shared cared record designed to integrate primary and secondary care data in real time.

The health organisation has opted for healthcare technology solutions provider Graphnet’s CareCentric product.

According to the firm, Dumfries is hoping to be the first Health Board in Scotland to achieve this level of integration.

By implementing the CareCentric solution, the NHS Board is aiming to allow clinicians and care professionals to view and update patient records for its 148,000 population.

Besides this, it is hoping to move towards being a paperless hospital, in line with Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt’s paperless NHS policy, which aims to replace paper records with digital alternatives in healthcare organisations by 2018.

“We are looking to create a modern model of integrated care. We want to provide clinicians access to all the information they need about a patient when and where they need it,” claimed Graham Gault, head of IM&T at Dumfries and Galloway.

“We see this as the key to providing efficient, joined-up services centred around the needs of the patient,” he added.

Social Care “The Next Step”

The shared care record, known locally as eCasenote, is currently being rolled out across Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary after initially going live in mental health.

Around two years’ worth of electronic notes from 5000 patients have been scanned into the record.

The next step for Dumfries is discussions with social care providers to integrate social work information into the digital record.

Graphnet claims this is its first foray in the Scottish health service.

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