The NHS Islington Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and the London Borough of Islington have awarded a five-year contract to BT to connect the information systems used by 10,000 health and social care workers in the borough.
The link up will support the development of a single digital care record for each of the borough’s 206,000 residents, as well as give them secure access to their own electronic personal health record.
Under the £7.4m contract, BT will build, operate and manage a hosted interoperability service, which is anticipated to go live this autumn.
The new service will help to reduce errors, as data collected about a person by one organisation can be viewed together in one place by health and care workers treating them in other organisations.
BT said the information will be presented in a secure manner on any device of a practitioner such as desktop, laptop or tablet.
The company will also develop a digital card record which takes data from information systems in different care settings into a single place, allowing health and care professionals to have a complete view of a person’s care.
The latest move from Islington will mark the first time that IT systems in the borough can work together or interoperate to allow clinicians and care workers in health and social care to be able to access all the data they require electronically.
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It also marks a milestone in achieving the government’s target of all patient care records being digital, real-time and interoperable by the end of 2020.
BT Global Services president of global government and health Ian Dalton said: "Pioneering programmes of this kind are vital in helping government and the NHS to provide interoperability between systems by 2020 to help drive efficiency and cost savings, and importantly, to put people at the heart of their care."
"We’re passionate about the role technology can play in providing a more integrated, joined-up approach to help organisations work together to serve people better at lower cost."
It was revealed in 2015 that Islington Council is planning to save £4m a year by launching a shared ICT service, designed to deliver a more responsive and more integrated service for local people.
