NHS board aiming to digitalise patient records onto a single platform

This is part of a five-year plan, and one of the key focuses is to fully convert health records, so that a patient’s NHS number could be accessed across both the NHS and a range of different social care systems, to aid integration and allow professionals to manage the quality of care provided.

One of the possibilities being considered is to begin using mobile devices across the health care sector, allowing staff to update electronic health records in real time. This change would eliminate the need for nursing staff working out in the community to go back to the hospital at the end of the day to input information, and would help to improve the recording of medical data in the long term.

Following investigations into cases such as Baby P, the lack of co-ordination between hospitals, social care and the police was highly criticised. The move to make records easily accessible to all of these departments would significantly improve community care and potentially save lives.

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