Bedfordshire Hospitals launches new shared health and care record

Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is working with InterSystems to launch a new shared health and care record to unify patient data from multiple sources.

Bringing together patients’ records from all health and social care providers across Bedfordshire and Luton will allow health and care professionals to access a complete picture of a patient’s health and support them in making better-informed decisions.

The shared record is underpinned by InterSystem’s HealthShare and provides the foundations for the trust’s clinical portal which aims to be a single point of access to relevant primary and secondary patient data. The portal, launched in April 2022, is helping Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes (BLMK) Health and Care Partnership, the ICS for the region, to achieve integrated, coordinated care.

Work is now underway to include patient and service user data from additional health and social care sources, including local councils, the ambulance service and other shared care records in the country.

Mark Thomas, chief information officer at Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes Health and Care Partnership said: “It’s hard to overstate the importance of information sharing in the health and care sector. InterSystems is supporting us in Bedfordshire and Luton, offering local health and care professionals access to the most accurate, holistic and up-to-date information about the residents they look after and deliver on efforts to achieve more integrated care across the NHS.”

The system means that GPs gain access to any relevant hospital information which could prove crucial when managing complex cases. Similarly, hospital clinicians can reconcile regular medications on a patient’s admission more efficiently.

In addition, the partnership helps deliver on the Health and Social Care Bill 2022, by facilitating the flow of information.

Chris Norton, managing director, UK and Ireland at InterSystems said: “Achieving better and more joined up care requires close collaboration between various organisations including, but not limited to, local councils, the NHS, and other partners. A shared health and care record – which could not be possible without widespread interoperability – plays an instrumental role in making that possible.”

Bedfordshire joins the likes of Black Country and West Birmingham ICS and Joined Up Care Derbyshire in launching a shared health and care record to support integrated healthcare.