East Kent buys portal to save time

East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust hopes to save up to 20 minutes of A&E doctors’ time per patient with the deployment of a clinical portal.

The trust has more than 7000 staff across five sites and has signed a pilot agreement for 500 licences for Harris Healthcare’s clinical portal.

It gives clinicians a single view of patient information held in systems that currently work in isolation.

The initial phase of the implementation will integrate data from six major clinical systems; the patient administration system; pathology; document management; vital signs monitoring; theatres; and the picture archiving and communications system.

Bob Reeves, head of IT at the trust, said the aim was to enable staff to operate more efficient and paperless clinics in line with the trust’s IT strategy and the government’s challenge to create a paperless NHS by 2018.

“By using such technology and simplifying our processes, East Kent estimates that the solution can reduce the amount of time that busy A&E doctors spend searching for patient information by up to 20 minutes for more complex patients,” said Reeves.

In combination with Imprivata’s OneSign single sign on, the portal will automatically log in, draw and present relevant patient information from each of the systems and provide it on a single screen.

The system will also be set up to enable doctors to order standard diagnostic tests quickly and confirm receipt of results.

Harris’ director of technology Mike Smith said East Kent was working to overcome the same challenge that many organisations faced – accessing existing information spread across numerous systems in one place.

“The clinical portal has great clinical buy-in as it works with the systems that front-line staff are already familiar with, but also provides a much clearer and quicker way to access patient data to ensure healthcare professionals have the right information at the right time,” he said.