Buckinghamshire selects Graphnet for county-wide shared record

Health and social care organisations across Buckinghamshire have selected Graphnet to provide a county-wide shared care record for 530,000 residents.

The shared record is part of the county’s Integrated Care Systems (ICS) strategy, with one of its priorities being a seamless flow of care from one service to the next and ensuring care professionals can work together on a shared plan for each individual.

The shared record programme is being led by NHS Buckinghamshire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and will use Graphnet’s CareCentric software to share information between Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust, Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust, Buckinghamshire County Council Social Care and 51 GP practices.

Further phases of the programme will add information feeds from out of hours services, South Central Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust, local hospices, care homes and other third party care providers and include them in the associated workflows.

A link into the Berkshire and Frimley ‘Share Your Care’ record will also form part of the programme to support the care of individuals in the south of Buckinghamshire.

The new system will enable health and care professionals to have immediate and appropriate access to all relevant information about a person’s care, treatment, diagnostics and previous history. This includes care plans and all necessary transfers of care information.

Confidentiality is paramount and staff will only be able to access the information they need depending on their role, with patients being given the option to opt-out of data sharing should they wish.

Dr Raj Bajwa, Buckinghamshire CCG’s clinical chair, said: “Staff in different organisations will have access to the right information at the right time in the right place to make speedier and better informed decisions, ultimately leading to improved clinical effectiveness and safety.”

The shared care record will be embedded into existing core operational systems, including EMIS Web, Adastra, System C’s Medway EPR and Liquidlogic social care software.

This means that users across the county will be able to access the shared information without a separate log-in.

Graphnet’s CEO, Brian Waters, said: “Buckinghamshire has an ambitious programme of work to support its ICS activity and we are very pleased to be part of it.”

“We specialise in sharing data and workflows across care communities and each new project builds on the experience of others. This Bucks project, with its cross-community collaboration, will make a tremendous difference to the delivery of care across the county.”