A clinical portal commissioned by four NHS boards covering some of the most remote areas of Scotland has gone live.
The North of Scotland Care Portal, built using Orion Health technology, brings together information previously held in two patient information systems used by the four boards and three Scottish Care Information Stores in the region.
It has been developed to give staff working in NHS Grampian, NHS Highland, NHS Orkney, and NHS Shetland a single view of patient information held in different IT systems across the boards. This includes picture archiving and communications systems and the national Emergency Care Summary.
Hosted by NHS Grampian, the portal was launched last week at Inverness’ Raigmore Hospital with an event to show care professionals how to access patient details, tests, scans and documents, and to share information with colleagues across the region.
Jim Docherty, NHS Highland clinical lead for eHealth, said: “This is all about giving clinicians quick and easy access to information.
“The NoS Care Portal takes information from many different systems and displays it all in one place and in context. It will save clinicians a lot of time and should make it much easier to care for patients who need to travel between NHS boards for treatment.”
Clinical relevance
It has been built using Orion Health’s Clinical Portal, which integrates IT systems and presents a clinically relevant view of the patient data they contain.
The next part of the NoS Care Portal programme will make (with appropriate agreements) GP and social care data viewable alongside the acute patient information, while further developments may include the roll out of Orion Health functionality to manage patient pathways and enable clinicians to set up collaborative worklists.
Iain Ross, NHS Highland head of eHealth, said: “By linking systems across secondary, primary and community care for the first time, our clinicians will have a more complete picture of the patient, so they can make more informed decisions.
“We have many more plans: but it is investment in the regional portal that has got us to this stage, and that will enable us to deliver them.”
Glasgow link
A link has already been established between the portal and the one used by NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, and the team is talking to two further NHS boards about connections to their Orion Health clinical portals.
This would be in line with the Scottish Government’s latest eHealth Strategy, which aspires to join up IT systems and make greater use of digital technology to support a single integrated health and care patient record.
Image from Getty Images through Orion Health
