Northamptonshire’s county council and NHS organisations are working on a shared record for health and social care.
The NEL Commissioning and Support Unit for the NHS has begun to look for support in a data integration exercise, bringing together information from health and social care providers and including the provision of software systems.
It has valued the project at about £1 million and aims to get it under way at the beginning of October with the contract to run for three years.
The Northamptonshire Local Digital Roadmap transformation programme – which covers the county council and the local NHS – includes a move to a county-wide information sharing model for primary, secondary and social care through the Northants Care Record.
This reflects one of the key features of the NHS Five Year Forward View strategy, which emphasised the need for increasing integration of care from different providers.
Single records for health and social care have been developed within a number of regions and local authority areas, including Leeds, Dorset and a group of authorities in the north of Scotland.
Last year the Government revealed plans to provide up to £7.5 million each over two years for the development of electronic shared health and care records in three areas in England: Greater Manchester, Wessex and London.
Image by Marco Verch, CC BY 2.0 through flickr
