Central Manchester shows off in-house IT

Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust’s has created a central intelligence portal with 800 active users.

The web based portal has been created solely by the trust’s IT team and publishes all reporting and information tools.

Darren Griffiths, the trust’s data warehouse developer, told EHI that the portal was customised to the trust’s needs.

“We couldn’t find one on the market that did everything we wanted to do. We can adapt to the requirements as we progress, which is bespoke to our needs,” he said.

Central Manchester data warehouse extracts information from several trust systems, with new ones added on a regular basis.

The portal consists of several different modules, such as trust wide reporting, divisional reporting and individual dashboards for clinicians.

“Consultants are being revalidated so they need to show everyone they are taking ownership of the data,” said Griffiths.

“They can go and look at all the data and observe trends for instance. We give the consultants links to other information as well.”

The portal, which went live last summer, is constantly being improved and updated to make it more intuitive for the end users and 800 people actively use it.

It lets users look at mortality reviews, lists of inpatient waiting times, community activity, discharge summaries, headline indicators.

The interactive portal also includes a clinical coding module, where clinicians can add comments to what is being coded, if they feel it should change.

Users can sign up to have reports emailed to them as well.

Helen Ainsbury, the trust’s director of informatics, said it was about making it easier for people to use reporting tools.

“It’s all done based on what people need first, and then we develop the IT around it. We want to make information available when people want it and how they want it,” she said and added that it had made a huge difference.

“Previously there wasn’t an awful lot of technology. Everything was done in Excel and emailed around,” she said.

The project has also included the development of customisable departmental websites and portals for sharing information with commissioners and GPs.

Read more about EHI reporter Lis Evenstad’s visit to Central Manchester to see the portal and other IT developments – including an EPR that should be as easy to use as Facebook or eBay – in Insight.