Single Record
The vision is for information about individual patients to be available securely where and when it is needed through the Single Electronic Health Record.
A significant cause of current information problems is the lack of an immediately available, accurate patient record, accessible to those who require the information whether care takes place during the day, the evening or at the weekend. Patient records are held by many professionals in many settings, for example within hospital departments or pathology labs, either on paper or electronically. While general practitioners (GPs) hold the most complete record, this information is currently held within the GP practice and is not shared. This approach to record keeping means the whole picture of a patient’s care is fragmented.
The Single Electronic Record is designed to overcome these problems. It does not mean that all information will be held in one place, but provides a view of the patient’s health record derived from many sources. It means that health professionals will be able to access all the information they need, whenever and wherever required. This access will take place in a secure environment, and the information provided is limited to what any given professional needs to know.
The Single Electronic Health Record is built from a number of key components. The Individual Health Record (an electronic “bridge” between GP and urgent care settings), and the Welsh Clinical Portal (a clinical “healthspace” that will allow health professionals to access records, request results and order tests from a variety of sources and labs). These projects will be brought into use incrementally, so developers and clinicians can evaluate and restructure systems when needed.
The eventual goal is the development of an integrated approach to health and social care records, although full integration of these records is still in the developmental stage.
Informing Healthcare has introduced a code of practice to ensure patients are asked before their information can be viewed by a doctor or nurse outside their GP practice. This ensures patients know only the right healthcare professional is accessing the right information.
Informing Healthcare’s security policy been the focus of several positive media reports this year, including a feature by The Guardian, praising its commitment to patient consent and suggesting America can learn from the Welsh approach to computerised health records.
Read more about this topic: Informing Healthcare
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