Isle of Wight connects care with Paris

Isle of Wight NHS Trust is expanding its use of Civica’s Paris electronic patient record system to join up adult social care with its community and mental health records.

The trust will also host the Paris EPR on behalf of the Isle of Wight Council to integrate social care with healthcare for the island’s population of over 145,000 people, and plans to introduce mobile working solutions for district nurses and other health care professionals working in the community.

Paul Dubery, the trust’s deputy director for ICT, told EHI News the trust has been rolling out the Paris EPR over the last 18 months, with the system now live across mental health but still being implemented in community health.

Dubery said the move to integrate social care with mental and community health “reflects the direction of travel from the Department of Health” towards more joined up care, particularly important given the wide range of services that Isle of Wight provides.

“Partly for us locally, the issue is that we are an island with water between us and the mainland, and that forces us to be quite self-contained.”

He said the current social care system used by the Isle of Wight Council is already used by NHS staff, with an information sharing agreement in place between the two organisations.

“This is really just a natural progression for us to share the same system.”

The mobile working solutions offered by Civica are also an important part of the trust’s deal, Dubery said, with the issue of poor wireless internet access across the island needing to first be resolved.

“The challenge is connectivity: on the Isle of Wight, as in rural areas, connectivity can be an issue for us, and we’re exploring a couple of options around that with Civica.”

Irene Woodford, the Isle of Wight Council’s ICT client link development manager, said the project is part of a wider programme of work to integrate adult social care and health services.

“It is the ideal solution to achieve the vision of person-centred, coordinated health and social care,” Woodford said.

The council is planning to go live with the Paris EPR in January 2016, she said.

David Roots, Civica’s managing director of health and social care, said integration is “an essential component of service transformation in the face of increased demand and severe financial pressures”.

“We are committed to working with social care and health care teams to help them achieve their ambitious visions.”

In 2011, Isle of Wight announced it had chosen Logica to build its first electronic patient record, using a combined integration and portal approach.

The trust said it would use the e-Care Logic EPR to collate information from ten different IT systems.

Dubery told EHI News the trust’s work with Logica is “focussed primarily on the acute side of things”, but could potentially expand to cover the Paris EPR.

Last July, the trust said it was upgrading its maternity system to EuroKing’s E3.net system as part of plans for “smarter data collection” and wider use of mobile solutions.