East of England Collaborative Working Supports Extensive SystmOne Roll-Out
East of England SHA has announced that by spring 2009, all PCTs in the SHA will be live with SystmOne Community and SystmOne Child Health. The June/July edition of the 'East of England Newslink' newsletter reports that SystmOne has become increasingly popular within PCTs due to the ability to share records between different services using the system.
In the East of England region, there are currently 86% of PCTs live with SystmOne Community, 79% of PCTs live with SystmOne Child Health, and over a quarter of GPs using SystmOne, with many more going live over the coming months.
To support the National Programme for IT work, East of England SHA has recently appointed seven clinical advisors, three of whom are already working closely with SystmOne. Each of them will be seconded to work one or two days a week in the clinical advisor role.
David Allen-Smith has been appointed as Community Clinical Advisor. In his current role, David works as the clinical lead for the introduction of SystmOne in South East Essex.
Dr Andrew Larkworthy has been appointed as GP and Technical Clinical Systems Advisor. Andrew is currently the clinical lead for SystmOne at West Hertfordshre PCT.
Chris Manning has been appointed as Clinical Advisor for Primary Care Systems, and currently works as SystmOne System Manager at North East Essex PCT.
One of the ways in which the East of England is supporting National Programme for IT deployments is with Special Interest Groups (SIGs). The groups were set up last year and the SHA reports that they have been a huge success – enabling trusts to share experiences of deployments, look at new ways of working to improve services, network with other colleagues, and work together on common problems.
So far, SIGs have been established for Community, Child Health, GP, Prisons, and most recently, Data Quality. Their success means that word has spread to other parts of the country, and PCTs from different regions are asking to be part of the groups.
Chris Manning told the EoE Newslink, "At the last Community SIG we had 80 members attend the group, including representatives from Newcastle PCT and Lincolnshire PCT. Both PCTs have offered to come back and talk to the group about what they are doing in their areas. Newcastle PCT are going to talk to us about their out of hours module, and Lincolnshire PCT will demonstrate their mobile working solution. Lincolnshire PCT have hundreds of community staff that each take a laptop into the patient's home so that they can capture patient information immediately, instead of having to go back to base to update the patient's record."
Within the Child Health SIG, the very first East of England standardised template has been developed for blood spots. This template will record any blood tests given to babies and will be published shortly. Chris says, "This report is the first of many to be produced by the different SIGs. It is a huge accomplishment for the group. We've had input from all PCTs within the East of England, including a health visitor, who has been able to provide specialist guidance around particular areas of the template."
Chris says, "The biggest benefit of the SIGs for me is that we can ensure that best practice is being shared wherever possible. It encourages collaborative working across all organisations and makes the group feel that they don't have to go it alone."
Kerry Guthrie is TPP's Customer Relationship Managers covering the East of England. She says, "We have a really good relationship with East of England SHA, and with the PCTs in the area. SystmOne now has a presence in each PCT and we are really pleased to be the strategy for them. It's great to see SystmOne linking healthcare across such large areas – the East of England shows that the SystmOne solution works and works well. We're looking forward to achieving 100% coverage of Community and Child Health across the SHA, and to increasing the number of GPs benefiting from SystmOne. It's an exciting time for TPP, and we believe, for healthcare in the East of England."
