Surrey health and care system goes live with the Surrey Care Record

20 million citizens now covered by Graphnet’s shared record system

The health and care system in Surrey has gone live with Graphnet’s shared record in order to deliver safer, quicker, more co-ordinated health and care services to its citizens.

The Surrey Heartlands Health and Care Partnership is now sharing GP, acute and adult social care information across the Integrated Care System, following a massive acceleration of its existing programme from February this year. 

It has also rolled out specific new functions in the shared record designed to record and alert care professionals about an individual’s coronavirus status. 

Katherine Church, chief digital officer for Surrey Heartlands, said: “I am delighted that our frontline clinicians and care professionals can now see near real-time information about their patients at the point of care. This brings huge safety and efficiency benefits, which are all the more valuable as they cope with the impact of Covid-19. 

“We are now moving ahead rapidly to make the record more extensive.” 

The Surrey go-live means Graphnet now holds records for a landmark 20 million people across England.  This includes care communities such as Greater Manchester, Frimley, Buckinghamshire, St Helens, Northamptonshire and Cheshire.

In Surrey, Ashford and St Peter’s Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is already contributing information to the Surrey Care Record and hospital clinicians are able to view the data at the point of care.  Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust is due to go live next, and over the coming months more hospitals, the local mental health trust and community pharmacies will start contributing and viewing data.

Dr Andy Sharpe, the Surrey Heartlands Chief Clinical Information Officer and a GP in Epsom, said the Surrey Care Record was a major step forward for direct care regionally. "It will also allow us to join the wider Thames Valley care record which means information can be shared across a much larger area.  That will help if people fall ill or have an accident away from home; this is particularly important as we know that up to 20% of people attending A&E departments come from outside the local area."

Surrey is part of the Thames Valley Health and Care Records Partnership (TVS LHCR), which is developing a new region-wide shared record and population health system for 3.8m people.  Graphnet is lead contractor on the wider TVS project, linking the underlying records together and providing analytics population health management tools. These tools are used in support of direct care – helping devise new, improved pathways for the treatment of people with diabetes, cancer, and mental health illness for example - and they also help analyse and understand the needs of the local population as a whole.

Sinead Mooney, Surrey County Council’s Cabinet Member for Adult Social Care and Public Health, commented: “The Surrey Care Record is another example of how joining up health and social care in Surrey, and harnessing new technology to make that possible, will help us provide more effective services to our residents enabling them to lead healthy and independent lives for as long as possible.

“Sharing relevant information in a secure and appropriate way will mean that our residents won’t have to keep repeating their history and our care staff will save time chasing key details and will have at their fingertips the most up-to-date and accurate picture so they can plan the best possible care and support.”

Brian Waters, chief executive of Graphnet, said the company had really enjoyed working with Surrey. “Our respective teams have worked really well together and we are delighted that the shared record is successfully deployed and the ICS is starting to reap the benefits.”