Durham and Darlington plays Symphony

County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust is aiming to go paperless in its A&E departments with Ascribe’s emergency care system, Symphony.

The trust has a ‘strategic’ relationship with Ascribe, and is a long-term user of its CaMIS electronic patient record.

The new system will be integrated with CaMIS using Ascribe’s Health Application Platform, as well as delivering a “fully electronic workflow for medical, nursing, allied health and administrative staff.”

Symphony can track patients from admission to discharge, drawing on data from multiple sources including the NHS Summary Care Record, and can automate the generation of clinical reports.

The Symphony installation at County Durham and Darlington will include patient triage and tracking, clinical orders, bed management, multi-disciplinary process notes, clinical documentation and a business intelligence data reporting system designed by Ascribe’s consultancy team.

It will also automatically generate detailed clinical discharge message for attendances and send them to appropriate clinicians.

Andrew Izon, associate director of health informatics at the trust, said in a statement that it would eventually replace three legacy clinical systems and provide it with a single registration process and shared clinical emergency care database for the first time.

“This joined up approach fits with the trust’s strategic goals; it will benefit our patients and provide our clinicians with a market-leading and functionally rich IT system” he said.

The system will initially be installed at the acute emergency departments at Durham University Hospital and Darlington Memorial Hospital.

A second phase of the project, which would see Ascribe Unscheduled Care installed in the trust’s urgent and unscheduled care sites, is also available.

Stephen Critchlow, Ascribe’s chief executive, said it was "delighted" that the trust had chosen Symphony and that it marked "the next phase" of its relationship with the company.