System C Welcomes National Debate on Integrated Care

System CSystem C welcomes news that the Government has appointed the Future Forum to take forward the national debate on the scope for integrating care both within the NHS and across health and social care.

The Future Forum - a group of health experts set up to hold the listening exercise on the Government's plans to modernise the NHS - last week started consulting clinicians and patients on the integration of care and on the use of information.

"System C and McKesson are engaged in a massive drive to deliver integrated services across health and social care, providing detailed patient-level information for care professionals and for patients themselves," said Dr Ian Denley, senior vice president of System C, a subsidiary of McKesson Corporation. Together, System C and McKesson UK have a unique breadth of product offering in the health and social care market, including the Medway range of hospital systems, Liquidlogic social care solutions and CarePlus Child Health.

"In our contacts with customers, we have seen many instances of innovative thinking in this area. A national debate on integration, and the pooling of experience to date, will help clarify and accelerate the process of integration," Dr Denley added.

The drive to achieve care integration at System C and McKesson is directed at the following major areas:

  • Improved communications between GPs and the acute sector
    GP Portal, a web-based application developed by System C, gives GPs access to information held within the Medway PAS/EPR about patients registered at their practice (hospital activity, orders and results, correspondence, alerts etc). System C has also integrated Medway with EMIS Web. Over 100 GP practices in Liverpool, representing 450,000 patients, are linked in this way to clinicians working in the city’s urgent care services.
  • E-health
    e-Health projects such as the use of portals to support patient choice and the personalisation agenda. For example, Barnsley Council is using the Liquidlogic CAF portal to allow social care clients to view relevant support services and manage their personalised care accounts on-line. The 'Care Fund Calculator' is a personalisation tool which allows local authorities, care commissioners and providers to get an understanding of care costs and staff support required to meet an individual's needs, and to help agree a price appropriate to those needs. Development of the Medway Patient Portal is at the pilot stage.
  • Use of dashboards and business intelligence products to collect, present and analyse patient-level information as part of the tailored care agenda.
    A national urgent care clinical dashboard, developed by System C, has helped Bolton PCT to reduce A&E attendances and non-elective admissions (against a pattern of regional increases) and to cut non-elective admissions for ambulatory care-sensitive conditions by 20%.
  • Linking health and social care
    A huge development effort is underway on integrating the Medway acute product set with Liquidlogic's child and adult social care systems. This allows users to call social care screens from within Medway, for example, and send discharge summaries back to social care systems. The company is currently negotiating a pilot project involving a number of social service authorities and an acute Trust.
  • Integration work linking CarePlus Child Health with Medway and the Liquidlogic product sets.
    Once completed, this will give acute clinicians information held in the McKesson CarePlus Child Health system, including vaccination history, developmental checks, child protection history and social care referrals. Community clinicians would likewise have visibility of pending appointments, inpatient episodes and e-Discharge summaries.

"Our goal is to give the NHS access to IT and robust patient-level information so carers can work effectively across boundaries," Dr Denley said. "This is where we can hope to achieve significant improvements in the patient experience and patient outcomes."

Related news articles:

About System C Healthcare plc
System C Healthcare plc specialises in the design and development of clinical patient management and business intelligence software, and provides systems implementation and consulting services to the health and social care sectors. Products include the Medway range of hospital systems and the Liquidlogic social care solutions.

System C is a subsidiary of McKesson Corporation, which currently ranks 14th on the FORTUNE 500. McKesson is a global healthcare services and information technology company dedicated to helping its customers deliver high-quality healthcare by reducing costs, streamlining processes, and improving the quality and safety of patient care.

Most Popular Now

Researchers Find Telemedicine may Help R…

Low-value care - medical tests and procedures that provide little to no benefit to patients - contributes to excess medical spending and both direct and cascading harms to patients. A...

AI may Help Clinicians Personalize Treat…

Individuals with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), a condition characterized by daily excessive worry lasting at least six months, have a high relapse rate even after receiving treatment. Artificial intelligence (AI)...

Accelerating NHS Digital Maturity: Paper…

Digitised clinical noting at South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is creating efficiencies for busy doctors and nurses. The trust’s CCIO Dr Andrew Adair, deputy CCIO Dr John Greenaway, and...

Mobile App Tracking Blood Pressure Helps…

The AHOMKA platform, an innovative mobile app for patient-to-provider communication that developed through a collaboration between the School of Engineering and leading medical institutions in Ghana, has yielded positive results...

Can AI Help Detect Cognitive Impairment?

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) can be an early indicator of Alzheimer's disease or dementia, so identifying those with cognitive issues early could lead to interventions and better outcomes. But diagnosing...

AI can Open Up Beds in the ICU

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, hospitals frequently ran short of beds in intensive care units. But even earlier, ICUs faced challenges in keeping beds available. With an aging...

Customized Smartphone App Shows Promise …

A growing body of research indicates that older adults in assisted living facilities can delay or even prevent cognitive decline through interventions that combine multiple activities, such as improving diet...

New Study Shows Promise for Gamified mHe…

A new study published in Multiple Sclerosis and Related Disorders highlights the potential of More Stamina, a gamified mobile health (mHealth) app designed to help people with Multiple Sclerosis (MS)...

AI Model Predicting Two-Year Risk of Com…

AFib (short for atrial fibrillation), a common heart rhythm disorder in adults, can have disastrous consequences including life-threatening blood clots and stroke if left undetected or untreated. A new study...

Patients' Affinity for AI Messages …

In a Duke Health-led survey, patients who were shown messages written either by artificial intelligence (AI) or human clinicians indicated a preference for responses drafted by AI over a human...

New Research Explores How AI can Build T…

In today’s economy, many workers have transitioned from manual labor toward knowledge work, a move driven primarily by technological advances, and workers in this domain face challenges around managing non-routine...

AI Tool Helps Predict Who will Benefit f…

A study led by UCLA investigators shows that artificial intelligence (AI) could play a key role in improving treatment outcomes for men with prostate cancer by helping physicians determine who...