Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust is taking steps to provide health and care partners with a digital health platform for securely communicating information on a person’s care.
It is planning to go live with the Better digital health platform and to implement a patient portal later this year.
The portal will be co-designed with service and system users and the implementation supported by digital engineering specialist Avenue3.
Better said the vendor-neutral platform, based on openEHR technology, will enable authorised health and care professionals to access information in real time, contribute towards a single care record and use low code development tools to create applications for use at the point of care.
The project is part of the trust’s effort to digitise and integrate mental health and learning disability services across its geographical area and underpin the transformation of services.
Opening up opportunities
Dr Ayesha Rahim, consultant psychiatrist and chief medical information officer at Surrey and Borders Partnership, said: “Moving to a secure open data platform opens up opportunities for us to better share valuable information with health and care partners to offer timelier and more joined up care.
“We will be co-designing the patient portal with people who use our services, their families and carers and clinicians to ensure that it is built around meeting the needs of users.”
Mike Cavaye, the trust’s acting chief digital information officer, said: “Surrey and Borders Partnership is on a journey to join up data and connect health and care services around the person and the care pathways they are on. Open data is the bridge between our EPR and these clinical pathways.
“The work of a mental health provider covers many different services and partners and the platform will allow the trust to build apps so that it has bespoke tools which are fit for purpose in the key areas it needs them for.”
Tracking outcomes
Better said that users of the new patient portal will be able to record and track their own outcome measures from any device with a web browser. It will enable the data to be reflected on the person’s electronic patient record within the current ecosystem at the trust.
The trust plans to build on the initial applications, with the potential for the portal to expand, enabling people to view and manage appointments, correspondence and care plans and for further data to be shared between health and care providers.
A second phase of the project will enable the capture of key data about a person’s physical health held by other health and care providers within the trust’s patient record.
