New local health and care partnership for London could save lives
UCLPartners are excited to be partnering with Imperial College Health Partners and the Health Innovation Network to support plans to create a ‘Local Health and Care Record Exemplar’ (LHCRE) in London. Following a successful bid, NHS England announced yesterday that London will be one of three selected areas, alongside Greater Manchester and Wessex, to receive £7.5 million over two years to put in place an electronic shared local health and care record that makes the relevant information about people instantly available to everyone involved in their care and support.
The new shared records will enable doctors and nurses to reduce unnecessary patient tests and improve safety through better working between hospitals and GPs and social care in London.
Through new partnerships, health and care staff will have better and faster access to vital information about the person in their care, so they can determine the right action as quickly as possible, whether that is urgent tests or a referral to a specialist.
London’s Chief Digital Officer, Theo Blackwell, said: “Through Local Health and Care Record Exemplars we are raising the bar for how the NHS can improve care through technology.
“From emergency treatment to end of life care, this extra investment will transform how health and care data is shared between councils and the NHS across London. As well, it will save lives by providing health and care professionals timely access to relevant patient records, supporting effective clinical decision making.
“As a LHCRE, we will ensure that the information about the services we receive in London is used to improve them, meaning health and care staff have better and faster access to vital information.”
At the moment, in many local areas GPs and other care professionals are often not able to access crucial patient information quickly if it is held in another part of the health service sometimes having to rely on post or fax instead. The London LHCRE know as ‘One London’ aims to put an end to this outdated way of working.
Luke Readman, Chief Information Officer for the East London Health & Care Partnership and the Senior Responsible Officer for One London said: “We are delighted to have been chosen to deliver this profound change to how information is shared to improve experience and outcomes in health and social care.
“The unique One London partnership was formed around an exciting and ambitious vision of better public services offering Londoners, across all of our vibrant and diverse communities, much greater control over their own health and care, knowing that when needed, they can consistently access the right support in the right place at the right time.
“One London is an exceptional opportunity to develop, adopt and export a blueprint that not only transforms the lives of 8.6 million Londoners, but which will be shared with the rest of the country.”
Charlie Davie, Managing Director of UCLPartners said: “I am delighted that London has been selected to be a Local Health Care Record Exemplar.
“UCLPartners have been working closely with our East London colleagues since 2016 to establish the Discovery East London programme, work which formed a core component of the One London bid.
“Being selected as a LHCRE area represents a generational opportunity to make the right information available to the right people, at the right time, to improve healthcare across the Capital. It will empower patients and health professionals and provide a platform that will help to consolidate the NHS as one of the global leaders in data driven health delivery.”
Each Local Health and Care Record Exemplar will work on a larger scale than existing local projects, providing healthcare staff who need it access to the information they need for people’s individual care.
Each LHCRE is made up of either one or multiple Sustainability Transformation Partnerships (STPs).
The new partnerships will also work to better understand demand for local services and to plan effectively for future demand.
On 25 May, new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will come into force in the UK, giving the public more control over how their personal information is used.
The Government will also introduce a new national data opt-out on 25 May, which will offer people a choice on how their confidential patient information is used for research and planning.
The NHS has a long history of scientific breakthroughs and providing patient’s with access to leading research trials and the latest treatments.
In the future the NHS and Government will seek to establish Digital Innovation Hubs to provide a safe, controlled and secure environment for research that can bring patients benefits from scientific breakthroughs much faster.