Advanced wins £1.3m young people’s mental health deal
Electronic patient record system will also be going mobile and there will be a patient portal
Forward Thinking Birmingham, the first mental health service for 0-25 year-olds in the country, has gone live using Carenotes from Advanced as its electronic patient record solution.
Carenotes will enhance communication and access to information across the organisation. The contract is worth around £1.3 million over five years. A second stage of the project will see the Carenotes Mobile app and patient portal added.
Forward Thinking Birmingham is a partnership between five mental health providers, led by Birmingham Children’s Hospital, aimed at closing the gap between children and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) and adult mental health services.
The partnership involves a mixture of NHS providers, private sector providers and charities, and will be supporting around 15,000 children and young adults every year.
As the service runs across six locations, the partnership needed a user-friendly electronic patient record solution to aid decision-making between the different providers and provide staff with central access to information.
Advanced was selected through the London Procurement Partnership. The software is being hosted on the N3 NHS cloud network.
Adam Carson, associate director of IT at Birmingham Children’s Hospital, said: “Carenotes has become our central port of call for all clinical information and is critical to the aims of the programme.
“It allows us to manage the pathway of care for 0-25 year-olds in a way that was not possible before, ensuring smooth transfers of information and services between the different stages of a patient’s care.”
Around 350 staff in a variety of clinical roles are using the system for recording appointments, clinical notes and assessments. Carenotes means they are no longer carrying around paper records and writing notes by hand. This saves the organisation time and paper and will also generate cost savings.
Carenotes Mobile will reduce travelling time and generate further efficiencies, and Carenotes’ patient portal will enable patients to access their medical records themselves.
The Forward Thinking Birmingham partnership consists of Birmingham Children’s Hospital, Worcestershire Health and Care NHS Trust, the Priory Group, Beacon UK and The Children’s Society.
Advanced recently opened a new Midlands headquarters at Birmingham’s Mailbox building, which is bringing 400 new jobs to the city.
@AntonySavvas