It was only a week or so ago I was pointing out that the world was abandoning centralized patient databases at a national or even regional level and moving to structures where the interested patient can directly access the health records.
Well what do you know? It has popped up again! First we have an example from the UK.
Health and medical app goes live with three major GP suppliers
Shireen Khalil
13 September 2017
A mobile app that allows patients to access all their medical information has now integrated with three major GP suppliers, making it available to more than 98% of England.
Evergreen Life first went live with EMIS last August and more recently TPP in June 2017 and Vision in July.
The service, which is on the NHS App Store, was developed by national healthcare company Evergreen Life which acquired PAERS Ltd, pioneers in online patient record access, and was accredited by the NHS in March this year.
Apps labelled ‘being tested in the NHS’ or ‘NHS Approved’ are part of an NHS programme. The Evergreen app is on the NHSD Framework, part of GPSoC Lot 1.
The app links a personal health record (PHR) with patient-facing services (PFS).
Brian Fisher, semi-retired GP and clinical and strategy director for Evergreen, said the aim is to help give patients more control, within the law, to own their own records.
He said since launching the app and going live with the suppliers, they have received good feedback from both patients and GPs.
“They say that the look and feel of the website and app are clean and simple and that using the app is straightforward and saves time and effort”, Fisher said.
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A target of one million users by July 2018 has been set by the company. “We listen to what our users are telling us, both GPs and patients, and we constantly improve our design and our delivery. The larger our population, the better we are going to serve them.”
Currently there are a total of over 250,000 users and 49,932 downloads of the app. Roughly the app gains about 3000 people a week on average.
Key benefits (Source: Evergreen Life)
- saves time and appointments
- robust – During the recent Wannacry cybercrisis, when many GP practices could no longer access their data, patients using our app and website were still able to access their data – and share it with their GPs and consultants
- safer for everyone – data can be securely shared and the patient can become the glue that holds the NHS together
- Offers the prospect of a holistic patient-centred record – we hope to bring together all your relevant health and care data in one place: your primary, secondary care and social care data
The full article is here:
And in Australia we have:
21 September 2017
A step forward for e-health data sharing
A Sydney PHN is devising a system to pull data from GPs’ desktop software for viewing by clinicians at local hospitals and to share patients’ hospital discharge summaries with GPs.
The South Western Sydney PHN’s Project iRAD will focus initially on providing essential clinical information from common GP desktop systems to hospitals. In the second phase, the pilot project will send back data from discharge summaries uploaded to the My Health Record.
“In achieving this we will enhance a clinician’s capability to make informed decisions, reduce duplication and optimise communications between healthcare providers,” SWSPHN Chief Executive Keith McDonald said.
For the project, the PHN has engaged international IT vendor Allscripts to adapt its interoperability platform, called dbMotion Solution, to transfer and view information between primary and acute care settings.
Five general practices in the PHN area will be selected to take part in the project, with a pilot site expected to go live in July next year.
Initially the project will use minimal data sets based on the NSW Agency for Clinical Innovation’s safe clinical handover resource, including test results, medications, reasons for referral and medical history.
Phase two of iRAD – which stands for Integrated Real-time Active Data – will widen the applications, introducing a shared-care planning tool and a patient portal.
More here:
Note carefully the need for currency and for as much accuracy as the GP can provide.
A great big centralized database is not the answer for concerned patients – given its lack of completeness and currency – to say nothing of the huge cost.
Things are shifting and the myHR is a moribund initiative whose time has pretty much passed.
David.
1 comment:
I have to agree David, the national body should have focused on enabling standards, working with the community on conformance and setting up policy to foster innovation while protecting our privacy without inhibiting healthcare. Boring and tedious work but essential and something that contributes greatly. Still on the bright side looking at lessons from overseas we are only a CEO and a year or so away from that.
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