Graphnet commissions Shearwater portals

The two founders of System C have launched a new company and announced that it has been commissioned by Graphnet Health to create portals for its electronic health record.

Markus Bolton and Dr Ian Denley announced a year ago that they were setting up Shearwater Healthcare Solutions as a health IT accelerator.

They have now launched Shearwater Systems, with £2.2m of initial funding from private investors and Kent County Council to develop a range of healthcare IT products, including two portals.

They have also announced that Graphnet Health, in which Shearwater Healthcare invested earlier this year, has commissioned the company to adapt the portals for its CareCentric shared care record.

CareCentric is used by a number of healthcare communities to hold and share information from multiple care settings. It holds half a billion health and social care documents for 17m patients across 42 NHS organisations.

These include GP surgeries, acute trusts and other bodies in Hampshire, where the technology underpins the Hampshire Health Record.

The Shearwater Systems portals will be used to make this information accessible to clinicians on tablets and mobile phones, and to patients on mobile devices and PCs.

Andy Bratt, managing director of Graphnet, said: “CareCentric is about breaking down the barriers between multiple care settings, so clinicians and carers have the information they need to work together effectively.

“Having secure, mobile access to the clinical record is clearly a key piece in this jigsaw.”

Shearwater Systems has named its portals the Rapport Clinical Portal and the Rapport Patient Portal. Both are based on the company’s own development engine, and will operate in native mode on IOS, Android and Windows machines.

For Graphnet Health, the clinical portal will be badged as CareCentric mobile, and the patient portal will be badged as CareCentric Patient Portal.

However, both products will be made available for use by other suppliers during 2014. “We founded Shearwater Systems because we saw a clear need for advanced clinical systems running across a full range of mobile devices,” Denley said.

“Rapport will bring additional power and accessibility to Graphnet’s CareCentric products, and Graphnet gives Shearwater Systems an instant market for the Rapport clinical and patient portals. This is an excellent arrangement for all parties.”

The new products will be on show for the first time at EHI Live 2013 in Birmingham next week, and will be deployed in March 2014.