The South West London Integrated Care Board has deployed the London Urgent Care Plan (UCP) application for shared care planning.
It is based on the Better openEHR data platform and will be used for the development of multiple care plans to which health and care providers can contribute using a standard set of tools, and to provide them with real time information.
The South West London ICB will manage the application for the OneLondon programme, which brings together the five integrated care systems in the capital.
A spokesperson said it will be available to primary, secondary and community care teams, and to some community settings such as care homes.
Existing care plans have already been migrated to the application and there are plans to integrate the care plan with all electronic patient records across the estate. Better’s clinical portal supports access through the Health and Social Care Network and public internet.
A communications and stakeholder engagement strategy is being developed to encourage take-up, emphasising the potential to support services such as end-of-life, frailty, mental health and diabetes care.
Time saver
Dr Phil Koczan, UCP clinical lead and clinical safety officer, said: “In primary care, our day-to-day jobs can be demanding as we support people with varying health and care needs and manage tasks outside of consultations. Maximising the use of digital tools, such as the technology provided by London’s Urgent Care Plan, supports the delivery of quality care for our population, whilst minimising the time it takes to create care plans, giving us more time to spend with the people who need it.
“When I start a new care plan for a person, I can pre-populate the plan with relevant demographic and medical information that is already on the person’s GP record, such as their prognosis and their preferred place of care. Updates to the care plan can automatically be shared back to the person’s GP record, which ensures healthcare professionals are always viewing the most up-to-date information, while saving us time from entering the same information twice.”
The deployment follows the Pan London Strategic Commissioning Group’s selection of Better as its digital development partner in December 2021. The company said its partners Atos, ReStart, CareIS, XYCare and FreshEHR supported the deployment.
