Wales outlines IT achievements

Wales’ emergency summary record now covers almost 50% of GP practices and will cover all patients by the end of the year, the NHS Wales Informatics Service has announced in its first achievements report.

The report provides updates on ten information services that the Welsh IT service has been working on since it was set up in April 2010, following a merger of five Welsh’ informatics organisations including Informing Healthcare and the Primary Care Informatics Programme.

The IHR project aims to provide out-of-hours clinicians with access to summary information from the patient record held in the GP systems used in Wales.

The achievement report says more than 1m patients at 210 GP practices in Wales now have an IHR and the service will be live across all areas by the end of the year.

Patients in Vale, Swansea, Neath, Port Talbot and Bridgend will be the next to receive leaflets about the service.

The NWIS report says 25% of practices also have access to the Welsh Clinical Communication Gateway.

Some 560,000 electronic referrals have been made through the gateway by GPs and there are plans to make it available across Wales by spring next year.

The informatics service has also been working on the Welsh Clinical Portal and the patient portal My Health Online.

The clinical portal has been launched in Hywel Dda Health Board and has reached "critical mass" in Carmarthenshire, with 661 users spanning all medical and surgical teams in Glangwilli and Prince Philip Hospital.

Readiness work for the clinical portal has now started with all other health boards.

A total of 22 sites are live with My Health Online, which enables online GP appointment booking and repeat prescription requesting.

NWIS said it expected all 707 community pharmacies in Wales to be scanning prescriptions electronically by the end of the year.

Dr Gwyn Thomas, director for informatics, health and social services, said NWIS’ priority remained the delivery of information and IT services that had the maximum impact on productivity and quality of care.

He argued that the core national ICT services developed by NWIS already had the potential to integrate and transform care.

However, he warned that “severe financial challenges” faced the public sector in Wales, that made the need to change the way healthcare services were delivered both necessary and unavoidable.

He added: “It also offers opportunities to use ICT to work differently and deliver the efficiencies needed to support on-going quality of care.”