Lincolnshire Care Portal team discuss challenges and benefits

The team behind the Lincolnshire Care Portal have spoken about the benefits and challenges they have faced.

Speaking at InterSystems’ Joined Up Health and Care 2019 event on 10 October, Liz Jones, digital project manager at the Lincolnshire Sustainability and Transformation Partnership (STP) and David Smith, digital programme lead at Lincolnshire STP, gave audiences an insight into the portal.

The Lincolnshire Care Portal, which is powered by InterSystems, is a computer system which provides health and care staff with a selected view of patient information contained in different health and care systems.

This includes:

• Medications and allergies
• Test results
• Letters
• Treatments received
• Future and past appointment
• Care Plans

The team spoke about the benefits of the portal, which included users being able to choose and receive alerts about patients.

Smith said: “Some of the tipping points for us have been including hospital letters, and also discharge summaries. That has made a big difference to GPs and community teams, and there is some evidence that length of stay is being reduced.

“We hope that is because community services can see the discharge letters and rally round to help them.

Though Jones said she didn’t want to “dwell” on the challenges, she did say being one of the first of its kind did pose some problems for the team.

“When you are first of type it is easy to underestimate how much work there will be and how much effort it is going to take,” she added.

“We can’t just look at an organisation that has done it, we have to do it. That also makes it difficult to fully realise benefits.”

Ramon Vullings, author, cross-industry expert and self-proclaimed ‘ideaDJ’, was another speaker at the event.

Vullings explored the idea of ‘cross-culture creativity’, highlighting how collaborations can bring out new and innovative ideas.

He also listed four tips which included ‘breaking out of siilos’.

“Beauty is at the borders”, he added.

Another tip was ‘smarter friends are everywhere’ and looking for ‘unexpected partnerships’ which could spark innovation.