Islington awards £7.4m IDCR contract

Islington council and clinical commissioning group have awarded a five year, £7.4 million contract to BT to create an integrated digital care record for the borough’s patients.

The new system will pull together a shared record for more than 200,000 patients and will also be made available to the patients themselves.

Islington is one of NHS England’s 25 Integrated Care pioneer sites, chosen to try out new approaches to joining up health and social care.

BT will build and manage a hosted interoperability service working with a number of partners including InterSystems and Nanthealth.

This will pull together patient data from information systems used across the area’s various different care settings, including Emis, System C, Adastra, Carecast and Liquid Logic.

The new integrated digital care records will be accessed by clinicians and care workers and show all of a patient’s encounters with the NHS and social care.

Ian Dalton, president of global government and health at BT said staff will be able to access the records on any device that has secure access to their organisation’s network, including a tablet, laptop, personal computer or smartphone.

“They can do this in a number of ways, including via their own clinical systems, through an icon, via single sign on or via an app. The exact method used will depend on the clinical system they are using,” he explained.

The plan is to go-live with phase 1 of the deployment with a small group of users this autumn. During phase 2, all users will have access to the digital records.

The records will also be made available this autumn for a small group of patient users on a selected patient care pathway.

Patients will be able to see information such as test results and upcoming appointments, as well as share information with clinicians and carers such as their weight and blood pressure. They will also be able to find information on dietary plans, fitness and general well-being advice.

Dr Katie Coleman, joint vice chair of NHS Islington CCG, said: “this is an exciting step in our plans to develop an integrated approach to health and social care throughout the borough of Islington.

“It will not only improve the experience of care, but will also ensure the best possible health and well-being outcomes for people,” she said.

Simon Galczynski, Islington Council’s director of adult social care, said the current limitations on integrating records are a daily frustration for patients and staff.

“An integrated, person-held record will help connect different parts of health and give the person greater control over their record and who can see it, while ensuring they don't have to keep giving the same information to each person involved in their care,” he said.