A new shared record linking health, social care and community services has gone live in Bolton.
The Bolton Care Record has been commissioned to support the transformation of care services in Greater Manchester.
The system is based on Graphnet’s CareCentric software and enables health and social care workers to view information from Bolton NHS Foundation Trust, Bolton Council, Greater Manchester Mental Health Foundation Trust, the Christie NHS Foundation Trust as well as 49 GP practices.
The initiative has been delivered by Care4Bolton, an association of clinicians and professionals from the four NHS organisations.
The initiative has now entered its first stage. This includes the creation of a Bolton-wide master patient index, combined with primary care data for over half the population and with acute information from Bolton NHS Foundation Trust.
The integration of social care data is currently being tested and mental health, community and the NHS 111 service will follow later in the year.
By connecting various health and social care services, it is hoped the Bolton Care Record will allow care providers to track the patient journey more closely and deliver better and “seamless” care. Meanwhile, patients will have greater control over elements of their care.
For example, the shared record will offer “integrated end of life care planning” to ensure that the needs and requests of people nearing the end of their life can be recorded and fulfilled.
The project is part of a wider programme of work underway to increase integrated working and combined assessments across teams; to reduce emergency and unplanned admissions; to cut down on unnecessary tests; and to improve discharge planning.
Dr Simon Irving, consultant in acute medicine and one of the trust’s chief clinical information officers, said: “The Bolton Care Record gives the clinicians access to a level of information that we’ve never previously had. This is especially important in the out of hours scenario, for example, where the richness of information can influence clinical decision making.”
The same technology used to launch the Bolton Care Record was used for a similar project in Berkshire, which connects 18 health and social care organisations in south-east England.
The shared care record programme, cleverly named Share Your Care, was announced on 11 January.