TrakCare across two thirds of Scotland

More than two thirds of Scotland’s population is now covered by a patient management system from InterSystems.

A progress report on Scotland’s e-health strategy says TrakCare covers 70% of the Scottish population.

InterSystems signed a contract with NHS Scotland in January 2010 for its PMS, which originally covered five health boards:  NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde; NHS Lanarkshire; NHS Ayrshire and Arran; NHS Borders; and NHS Grampian.

The progress report, ‘Delivery of eHealth Strategy 2011-2017’, says that NHS Scotland plans to continue the roll out of the system during 2014 to reach 76% of the population. Implementations are planned  in NHS Highland, NHS Orkney, the NHS National Waiting Times Centre and NHS Shetland.

The system, which provides the health boards with patient administration functionality, scheduling, order communications and results reporting, has around 60,000 users.

Health boards can also decide to take optional modules including: A&E; clinical support tools; hospital electronic prescribing and medicines administration; pharmacy management; maternity; mental health clinical; neonatal; and theatres.

The report says Scotland expects to move away from relying on paper records and make electronic systems “the default”.  It  also says that NHS Scotland will focus on videoconferencing to support clinical services and training.

“In the first quarter of 2013-14 there were over 23,500 videoconference calls across NHS Scotland,” it says.

“In addition, some boards are making extensive use of visual tools on their computers, such as webcams, to support routine interactions. There were 33 reported examples of different types of clinical services being provided at a distance using video conferencing, including stroke and orthopaedics.”

One of the aims of the eHealth strategy is to improve the safety of people taking their medication and their effective use. The paper says it will focus on implementing electronic prescribing services across the health boards.

“This aim is focused on improving communication and reconciliation across all transitions of care (for example, when being admitted to or discharged from hospital), and making electronic patient medication summaries available to appropriate healthcare workers in both scheduled and unscheduled care,” says the paper.

“There will be a greater focus on certain elements of the strategy, such as the implementation of systems to exchange medicines information between GP practices and acute hospitals, and for hospital electronic prescribing and medicines administration, subject to available funding.”

NHS Scotland is also working on developing a Health and Social Care Information Sharing Strategic Framework which is due to be published later this year.