The NHS Health Innovation Network (HIN) has won funding to work on increasing the take-up of the Coordinate My Care (CMC) digital care record.
It has been awarded £200,000 by NHS Digital though a tender process run by the South West London NHS Commissioning to lead the work.
The project is aimed at increasing the number of people in London, currently at over 124,000, who have a CMC urgent care plan.
Hosted by the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, it provides a digital record of up-to-date clinical information, contacts and their wishes of how to be treated for health and social care staff in an emergency.
As an example, HIN – which is the academic health science network for south London – has pointed to the case of a man who suffered from dementia and did not wish to be resuscitated in a critical emergency.
HIN plans to work with NHS and care organisations colleagues across London to identify a project in each of the five sustainability and transformation partnerships (STP) areas to accelerate the adoption of CMC to match local priorities and address local opportunities.
The scheme will fund local clinicians to focus on championing CMC with their peers and clinical colleagues and help to embed it in local care pathways and processes.
Tracking impact
A spokesperson for HIN said it is working with each of the projects to track the impact in terms of increased numbers of people and the quality of the record content.
Zoe Lelliott, chief executive of the HIN, said: “Helping patients across London to better express their wishes about their care is very important at this time. We are extremely pleased to have this opportunity to work with Coordinate My Care and our NHS and care system colleagues to not only improve the quality of digital urgent care records but speed up the adoption and spread of this technology.”
Professor Julia Riley, founder and clinical lead for CMC, commented: “As the coronavirus pandemic continues, we are hearing that many patients and families are talking about difficult futures, challenging decisions and appropriate treatments.
“This partnership with the Health Innovation Network means that health care services across the community will be supported to encourage increasing numbers of patients to have a digital CMC record, to ensure their wishes are recorded, to better their outcomes and to support the urgent care services.”
It is understood that there is an ambition to extend the use of the CMC beyond London, although no decisions have been taken so far by NHS commissioners outside the city.
Image by Matt Madd, CC BY 2.0
Amended 12 January to clarify hosting role of Royal Marsden Trust
