Welsh hospital trust looks to merge patient records

Pontypridd & Rhondda NHS Trust has installed a system that allows patient details to be stored on a central server, transferred between departments and synchronised automatically when they change.

The MultiVue system from VisionWare, which runs on a Microsoft BizTalk Server, links the pathology, radiology and critical care clinical information systems with the PAS.

According to the company, the system will allow the trust to meet data management targets under the Welsh healthcare IT reform programme, Informing Healthcare, and will allow the hospital to introduce the programme’s Single Integrated Electronic Health Record (SIEHR).

Willie Clinton, sales director at VisionWare, said: "The goal for the NHS today is to have seamless, patient-focused information. MultiVue delivers this by providing clinicians with the right information to make informed decisions at the point of care."

The software will prevent the need for different patient identification numbers across the four systems and different data in each patient record. It can be configured to merge duplicate records both automatically and manually on an ad-hoc basis in the more complex cases. A central team of staff will administer the system and update and standardise all the patient records held by the Trust. The records are based on XML technology.

The Informing Healthcare programme is intending to roll out the first stage of the SIEHR by the end of 2005 through a "corporate, all-Wales" approach. Work is being undertaken to improve the data quality of health records for this.

Pontypridd & Rhondda NHS Trust was established in 1999 after the merger of East Glamorgan NHS Trust and the Rhondda Healthcare NHS Trust, and covers numerous sites including Royal Glamorgan hospital and mental health and palliative care units.