Northgate Managed Services has been appointed as the preferred bidder to deliver, implement and manage a clinical portal service for an NHS consortium covering NHS Lothian, NHS Fife, NHS Borders and NHS Dumfries and Galloway. As part of the five year deal, the portal solution will be based on technology from Carefx who will work in partnership with Northgate to deploy and support the system.
The initiative is part of an NHS drive in which Scottish health boards have formed three regional consortia, each looking at the best way to use clinical portals in their areas. The NHS in Scotland has carried out detailed research into the use of clinical portals as a cost-effective and highly efficient way to reduce costs and administration while simultaneously speeding up patient services. Part of the research included a survey in 2009 of more than 3,240 clinicians - many in senior posts - to identify their requirements from a clinical portal programme, most of which will now be included within the new contract.
Once deployed the clinical portal will provide healthcare professionals with streamlined access to critical patient information from a single browser view. This will replace the current, time consuming process of retrieval of information through disparate systems and paper records.
The clinical portal is seen as the key to realising the vision in the Scottish Government's strategy and action plan Better Health Better Care (2008), to "...ensure that the right information is available at the right time, in the right place, to enable staff to provide the best possible care."
Graham Gault, Head of Information Management & Technology, NHS Dumfries and Galloway, who led the consortium, said: "The clinical portal initiative is widely supported by clinicians. Northgate Managed Services and Carefx have provided a prototype for the consortium which has proved that it can integrate with the different systems used across the four health boards and provide clinicians with a single view of the patient across each of the regions and real-time patient information, with the utmost accuracy. We look forward to working with Northgate and Carefx, to introduce the new system across all four boards in the consortium over the year, which will allow them to reduce their dependence on paper records."
"The aim for all healthcare organisations today is to improve the quality of patient care, while reducing the costs to the NHS of providing its services, and this initiative strengthens our position in being able to do just this," adds Gault. "By deploying the portal we know that our consortia of trusts will be able to deliver secure, real-time access to relevant patient data, at that precise point in the care pathway. This is about meeting the needs of healthcare staff, the organisation and most importantly the patient."
Northgate has over 40 years experience in providing and managing ICT services and solutions which improve business process and efficiencies whilst reducing costs. Currently working with over 60 health sector organisations, including every health board in Scotland, Northgate has delivered smarter, more efficient ways for them to operate.
James Turnbull, Managing Director, Infrastructure Solutions, Northgate Managed Services, said: "We are very pleased to be selected as the preferred bidder to provide a clinical portal for the NHS across such a large area of Scotland. Working in partnership with Carefx, we are providing a technology that offers the health service an ideal opportunity to meet its present and future needs."
"Clinical portals can significantly speed up patient services and cut down on bureaucracy as the technology will pick up data from wherever it is stored and display it instantly," Turnbull added. "But more than that, for healthcare providers it eliminates the expense of having to replace their existing IT systems. As the portal is affordable and easy to deploy, it also offers a swift return on investment, which is more important than ever at a time when budgets are very tight."
The Carefx portal technology, built on its Fusionfx platform, has been designed to improve the quality and safety of patient care.
Wayne Parslow, European Vice President and General Manager, EMEA, Carefx, said: "There are clear advantages in opting for a solution which brings together the information from existing systems rather than scrapping them and undertaking huge projects to install new ones. This is all the more true when a system like ours can achieve what healthcare workers want by delivering dynamic and personalised patient data in an instant, wherever they are. Giving healthcare staff the fullest possible picture will improve continuity of care, patient safety and clinical productivity while reducing fragmentation to give the patient a better experience. Working on this project we have formed a strong partnership with Northgate Managed Services. It has also provided us with a strategic platform for future collaboration to develop further leadership and innovative thinking for the healthcare sector."
About Northgate Managed Services
Northgate Managed Services is part of the Northgate Information Solutions Group, owned by private equity company Kohlberg Kravis Roberts KKR. It a leading IT services company providing cloud based & infrastructure services to public, private & third sector organisations & specialist managed services in the education, government, utilities & charities sectors.
The company works in partnership with its customers to gain an in-depth understanding of their organisation and create a technology strategy to support transformation, drive operational efficiency and reduce costs. In the Health Sector, Northgate Managed Services works in partnership with over 60 health sector organisations including every health board in Scotland and Northern Ireland to deliver smarter, more efficient ways of operating.
About Carefx Corporation
Carefx supports healthcare organisations in achieving their vision of advancing the quality and safety of patient care delivery through its Fusionfx suite of interoperable workflow and analytics solutions. Fusionfx streamlines and simplifies clinical and business workflow and connects care providers to the information they need - where, when, and how they need it. By managing care transitions and information gaps between diverse systems, departments and facilities, Fusionfx delivers crucial patient information with speed, efficiency and logic. Carefx supports more than 700 hospitals, health systems, regional health information organisations (RHIOs) and health information exchanges (HIEs) across North America and Europe.
For more information, visit www.carefx.com.