Dementia and frailty services are to be the focus of the first set of investments for Greater Manchester’s programme for digital transformation of the region’s health and social care.
The Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) and Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership (GMHSCP) have highlighted the effort as significant step of a £14.3 million programme to develop the use of new technology across public services.
GMCA is contributing up to £6.8 million to the programme while GMHSCP is putting in £7.5 million under NHS England’s national Local Health and Care Record transformation programme.
They said the first tests will be aimed at improving care for people with dementia or who are frail by improving information sharing between themselves, carers and professionals. It be used to integrated care planning and to detect changes in people’s conditions to keep them out of hospital when possible.
There are also plans to digitise assessments of children’s development up to the age of five. Parents and guardians will be able to complete and review tests online, feeding into the child’s health record and helping to identify those needing additional further.
The organisation said this will be save time for health visiting teams, equating to a cost of about £10 million per year.
Left behind
Jon Rouse, chief officer of GMHSCP, commented: “Despite the digital revolution, public services have been left behind. All too often important information is held on hundreds of different systems which cannot be accessed from one place, so people end up having to repeat their story, care is not joined up, important information is missed and problems are not identified early, which in extreme cases could lead to harm.
“Each locality has already made good progress on sharing information locally, but we now need to move beyond the basic ability to share information to maximising the opportunities brought by devolution and take a GM-wide approach to digitally transforming our public services.
“This will allow us to provide more personalised, integrated care and treatment, supported by rich data and next generation technology. It will ensure we continue to be at the leading edge of health innovation, supporting a continued increase in jobs, growth and prosperity for all.”
GMCA and GMHSCP are beginning a procurement process for a number of technology solutions as part of the programme.
Image by Cotchobee, CC 3.0 through Wikimedia
