British software and services company Advanced is making strides towards breaking down siloes in primary care in the NHS. It has today announced it is integrating its clinical patient management system Adastra – used by NHS 111 providers across the UK – with the NHS’ GP Connect Access Record: HTML.
The GP Connect HTML record view is a crucial aspect of the NHS Digital’s GP Connect programme which has been set up to support the development of products that enable different systems in different care settings to communicate with each other.
With Access Record: HTML integrated with Adastra, 111 and Integrated Urgent Care (IUC) service providers will be able to view a patient’s up-to-date record held by their own GP. Providers will be given access to a range of important information about a particular patient including encounters, allergies, medications, referrals and more.
The record view is obtained upon verification of the patient’s NHS number – following a Personal Demographics Service (PDS) trace – and gives a snapshot of the record at the time it is requested. It displays similarly to the NHS’ Summary Care Record but with a richer data set.
As well as seeing significant value in GP Connect Access Record: HTML, Advanced also believes that enabling appointment booking functionalities from 111 into a patient’s registered GP practice is another important step in the right direction for interoperability. This means allowing 111 providers to search for, and book, available appointments as well as automatically send a text message to a patient with details of their appointment.
The Access Record: HTML and Appointment Management features will save considerable time for clinicians, and provide better, more convenient care for patients. They will also help meet targets under NHS England’s Improving Access To General Practice programme which addresses difficulties in accessing services such as making an appointment.
“We fully support the aims of GP Connect,” says Ric Thompson, Managing Director > Health & Care > Advanced. “It enables system suppliers like Advanced to develop against a defined specification which allows its health and care solutions to integrate with GP system suppliers that have also developed against this standard, but without the need for bespoke works.
“The advantage of GP Connect is that, as a standard which uses one central location to obtain information, it supports interoperability within the NHS. What’s more, it means Adastra only requires setting up once – saving valuable time and resources.”
