NHS Long Term Plan

The NHS Long Term Plan published in January 2019 was quite a read but the one thing that stands out is the role of digital as an enabler, in fact there is a whole chapter on digital and how it will become mainstream across the whole of health and social care.

Virtually every aspect of modern life has been and will continue to be reshaped by innovation and technology, healthcare is no exception to this. The NHS Long Term Plan describes the practical steps that will drive transformation:

• Create straightforward digital access to NHS services and help patients and their carers manage their health.
• Ensure that clinicians can access and interact with patientrecords and care plans where ever they are.
• Use decision support and artificial intelligence (AI) to help clinicians in applying best practice, eliminate unwarranted variation across the whole pathway of care, and support patients in managing their health and condition.
• Use predictive techniques to support local health systems to plan care for populations.
• Use intuitive tools to capture data as a by-product ofcare in ways that empower clinicians and reduce the administration burden.
• Protect patient’s privacy and give them control over their medical record.
• Link clinical, genomic and other data to support the development of new treatments to improve the NHS, making the data captured for care available for clinical research, and publication.
• Ensure NHS systems and NHS data are secure through implementation of security, monitoring systems and staff education.
• Mandate and rigorously enforce technology standards toensure data is interoperable and accessible.
• Encourage a world leading health IT industry in England with a supportive environment for software developers and innovators.

Across the Integrated Care System (ICS), Calderdale and Kirklees are well placed to deliver on these steps, as part of the digital journey interoperability and the access to key information across all health and social care settings is playing a prominent role.

Following the introduction of the Electronic Patient Record (EPR) at Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust (CHFT), it has always been the intention to share records across health and social care boundaries within Calderdaleand Huddersfield areas where there is benefit for the patients and clinicians. Health Information Exchange (HIE) provided by Cerner and Medical Interoperability Gateway (MIG) provided by Healthcare Gateway Limited are the solutions we are using to make this a reality. Straightforward digital access has been enhanced through the provision of mobile solutions for over 600 community staff, operating in over 40 bases.

The national focus continues to be on care closer to home, the aim is to provide technology to help teams deliver improved patient care, whilst increasing productivity. The mobile solution removes the necessity for community staff to regularly return to base in order to update and access patient records.

We will continue to develop and progress digital maturity across our region by introducing digital solutions that will deliver against the Long Term Plan; to ensure our patients continue to receive the best care possible.

Published by Mandy Griffin on 12.04.2019

This story first appeared in our 21st Issue of THIS is the news newsletter.