In April 2019, the Great North Care Record (GNCR) and Cerner announced a partnership to implement a shared care record across the North East and North Cumbria in the UK.

The system is supported by Cerner’s Health Information Exchange (HIE) and securely connects patient information across the region.

Since going live in March 2020, the GNCR has enabled 8,000 care professionals spanning adult social care, primary care, out of hours, ambulance, mental health community and acute care settings, to access records in HIE.

WHY IT MATTERS

In October, a HIE first-of-type connection with the North East Ambulance Service NHS FT was established. According to a blog published on the GNCR website, this marked a significant achievement given its impact on decision making for both ambulance crew and hospital staff. 

Furthermore, with approximately 5,000 monthly HIE accesses by Ambulance Service staff, decision making by both frontline and operations centre staff in the region is now more informed.

By the end of 2020, there was a total of 220,000+ monthly accesses of HIE across all organisations, which is over 7,000 times each day that an individual’s information was aggregated and viewed in one place.

THE LARGER CONTEXT

Earlier this year, Cerner and Epic announced that they hit milestones in their efforts to assist with COVID-19 vaccinations. Cerner announced that 175 clients across 11 countries had installed its Mass Vaccination solution.

Last year, Cerner and Zesty collaborated on a new NHS patient engagement solution in the aim to make it easier for patients to manage their outpatient appointments and correspondence online.

ON THE RECORD

Dr Claire McDonald, consultant geriatrician and CCIO, Gateshead Health NHS FT said: “One of the best things about accessing the HIE has been able to see crew reports from the ambulance trust. Particularly for the patients I treat, some of whom have cognitive challenges – being able to see what the crews have recorded has been invaluable. This is especially the case if we don’t have relatives or carers to speak to when the patient is admitted.

“We can also see information from our neighbouring trusts which again is very useful, particularly from Newcastle Hospitals as we often have patients who have been referred over there. It means I can see what’s happened to them and helps us to offer more joined up care between the two trusts.”