The last few months have seen an increase in the acceleration of record-sharing initiatives across England, with some areas getting particular traction – The OneLondon initiative, for example, is believed to have turned London into the most connected capital city from a healthcare perspective. The programme, which uses Cerner’s health information exchange (HIE) platform, has gained praise for its widespread and open approach to public engagement and the rapid uptake of the technology across STPs.
During the first wave of COVID-19, this London-wide shared record was linked up to London’s Nightingale hospital – meaning that information for patients admitted to the Nightingale was immediately available to the relevant care teams regardless of where in the city patients had been transferred from.
Meanwhile, health and care professionals in the North East of England have been using the same technology to seamlessly share and access patient information from across the region. The Great North Care Record (GNCR) initiative has also made significant progress during the pandemic – Since the initial go-live which covered GP record-sharing, the scope has expanded to further include two acute trusts, one mental health trust and ambulance service, and community records from a number of organisations. All acute, mental health and ambulance trusts as well as adult social care are expected to be added over the next few months.
In short, it is clear that enormous progress has already been made, and with NHSX’s recent mandate for all STPs and ICSs to have shared records in place by September 2021 this will only serve to accelerate the pace. But what can be learnt from the fantastic work that has been done so far in these regions? What story are the usage stats telling us? and, do adoption figures really tell the full story or are there additional factors that must be considered?
To help answer some of these questions, Imperial College London, with support from Cerner, has recently published the findings of a study that looks into the observed differences in HIE adoption and provides practical recommendations to drive wider uptake.
The results from the research have now been published in a paper by BMC Health Services Research – You can view the full report here: A mixed-method service evaluation of health information exchange in England: technology acceptance and barriers and facilitators to adoption.
To find out more about Cerner’s HIE technology, speak to your Cerner relationship owner, contact us here, or message us on Twitter.
