A group of public sector organisations in the Harrogate area are planning to launch a local digital care record as the first deployment of a regional initiative for Yorkshire and Humber.
The Harrogate Alliance is aiming to deliver a local version of the Yorkshire and Humber Local Health and Care Record (LHCR) around September.
Neil Bartram (pictured), technology partner, business and change at North Yorkshire County Council, outlined the plan at UKAuthority’s Digital Health and Social Care Conference last week, saying the regional programme will involve more than 80 organisations.
Partners in the Harrogate Alliance include the county council, the Harrogate and Rural District Clinical Commissioning Group, the Yorkshire Health Network of GPs and local care trusts.
Bartram said the alliance is aimed at developing integrated community health and care services with digital technology providing a crucial element, and that the LHCR will provide for a suite of four products: a shared record for health and social care; a system to link together clinical systems; an intelligence capability for population health management; and a person held record that people could access to check on and contribute to their care.
Frustrated staff
“At the moment we all recognise frustrated clinical and care stuff,” Bartram said. “There are a number of reasons, such as different systems, information all over place, paper still in use, faxes and telephones. A lot of work goes into working around those, but after an LHRC solution is introduced that’s gone.
“We are talking about a shared care record, single views of a person, improving delivery of care across different clinical settings and into social care. It’s also for the patients themselves in being able to interact with the information and contribute their records.”
He added that within the Harrogate Alliance there are efforts to support mobile working by using govroam – the Wi-Fi access service developed by Jisc – to provide connectivity, and to raise the level of digital skills and an understanding of agile methodologies among the partners.
