All Birmingham patients to get MyHealth

All long term condition patients at University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust are to be given the ability to access, share, and add to their health records.

The trust’s IT team developed a web-based patient portal for liver patients, which was trialled with 12 patients earlier this year.

Director of informatics, Daniel Ray, told eHealth Insider the project was now going to be rolled out to include all patients with long term conditions being treated at the trust.

“The potential for this is huge” Ray said. “Over the next few years we expect to have between 12-15,000 people accessing it.”

The MyHealth patient portal can be accessed through any internet connection, including through smartphones.

It gives patients and doctors the ability to see essential information such as medications, clinical letters, medical history, diagnoses, scheduled appointments and test results.

People can also load information, such as blood results, that they have had taken in other places into the portal.

The trust information is automatically uploaded from the prescribing, information and communications system (PICS), that University Hospitals Birmingham has developed.

The portal also has a calendar function that allows patients to enter information such as holidays, which Ray said was saving significant amounts of time.

“Now when a receptionist in the liver unit goes to send a request to a patient about an appointment, they can see if they’re going to be away on holiday, so they won’t suggest those dates.”

The portal also includes a communication function where patients can contact their own consultant, or other patients who may have the same rare condition as them.

This is enabling patients to build a support network of people with whom they would not previously have been in contact.

Read more about Shanna Crispin's recent visit to University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Trust in the Insight section. Daniel Ray will be speaking at EHI Live 2011, which is taking place at the NEC in Birmingham from 7-8 November.