Greater Manchester ramps up region-wide care record as part of Covid-19 response

Health and care organisations across Greater Manchester have gone live with a single GM Care Record for all 2.8m citizens in an accelerated deployment to provide frontline professionals with vital information in the fight against Covid-19. 

The GM Care Record uses Graphnet’s CareCentric shared record software to collate information held by around 500 different health and care providers such as GP practices, hospitals, community and social care teams to ensure that doctors, nurses and practitioners providing care and treatment can see up to date medical records, medications and test results. 

It builds on the 10 existing borough-based care records already in place, all also built with Graphnet’s software, and creates a single, joined-up care record for all of the city-region.  This single care record is already being used by over 6,000 care professionals across Greater Manchester. 

In response to the pandemic, GM has worked with Graphnet to include information about when a patient has been tested or diagnosed with Covid-19 and whether they are self-isolating at home or have been hospitalised.  This ensures continuity of care across different care settings and alternatives such as digital support can be put in place.

Greater Manchester has also adopted Graphnet’s inbuilt business intelligence platform as part of its Covid-19 response and recovery plans. This platform supports Covid-19 analytics, monitoring and planning using anonymised data.  This will be overseen by an expert group including members of the public, researchers and clinical leaders. 

The GM Care Record is embedded into local systems and is being used by care professionals to look up the medical records of up to 4,000 people a day.  Altogether, 94% of GP data feeds in the region are now live on the GM Care Record, together with 10 acute trusts, councils, mental health trusts and community providers.

The project has been overseen by Health Innovation Manchester and the GM Health and Social Care Partnership, working with Graphnet and on behalf of GM’s devolved health and care partners.  Rapid progress on the deployment has been made in weeks rather than months as part of the city region’s digital response plan and collaborative effort.

Guy Lucchi, Digital Innovation Director, Health Innovation Manchester, said: “The GM Care Record supports clinical decision making by providing access to important information on medications, test results, care plans and social care support.  All of which are essential to treating Covid-19 and other health conditions.  The accelerated deployment of the single Greater Manchester record is a major step forward in ensuring patients are provided with the best possible care based on the most accurate and up to date information. 

“It is also a testament to the strength of our existing devolved partnerships across GM to take swift action on things that will directly benefit patients and frontline services, as well as our ability to work effectively with industry partners like Graphnet to deliver maximum value.”

Dr Kiran Patel, Bury GP and Chair of the secondary uses oversight and scrutiny group, added: “As well as informing direct care, the GM Care Record will help the NHS to understand more about how Covid-19 is affecting the health and wellbeing of local communities and what services need to be in place, as well as informing the world leading research being conducted by our four GM universities.”

Brian Waters, Chief Executive of Graphnet, commented: “This has been a great partnership effort in response to the very difficult national situation.  We’ve been working with the various GM boroughs individually for some time, and it is great to see it all come together now into a single record which is helping underpin the delivery of co-ordinated, integrated services across the region.”