Glasgow gets shared child records

Greater Glasgow Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services staff are using a shared electronic record to improve the care of ‘at risk’ children.

More than 250 professionals across 10 CAMHS teams are using Emis Web to share patient information on more than 5,000 children and teenagers.

The teams – including psychologists, psychiatrists, nurse therapists and speech and language therapists – have a shared view of each other’s concerns and are able to contribute to a multidisciplinary chronology of ‘significant events’ for children in their care.

This is expected to help speed up decision-making, especially around child protection interventions, as staff previously relied on colleagues sharing information from paper records.

The CAMHS implementation is the first stage of what Emis believes will be the largest single shared child health record deployment in the UK.

Over the next two years, more than 2,000 staff will be able to securely share information on 240,000 children aged 0-18 across a range of community children’s services.

Programme lead at NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde Karen McFadden said: “Access to the shared record will heighten awareness of cancelled appointments and non-attendance across services, and contribute to the overall picture and assessment of risk.

“Where we suspect a child protection issue, we can call up information from the single shared record, hugely speeding up our response. The single shared record will also improve the range of information available for child protection investigations by social services staff.”

Six months on from implementation, she said EMIS Web has supported a complete redesign of CAMHS and is saving clinical and administrative time.

“Each stage of the process is now fully electronic, from referral to first appointment and through to data reporting,” McFadden said.

“It enables us to efficiently report on referral to treatment targets nationally, as well as giving us an instant picture of our performance.”

The project was enabled by bespoke software development work from EMIS, which recently launched a Community, Children’s and Mental Health division, headed up by former North Bristol NHS Trust IM&T director Martin Bell.

Development work included integrating the Scottish Care Information Master Patient Index with EMIS Web – ensuring that patient information, including contact details, is up to date.