Suffolk and North East Essex ICS collaborate with Better to create an integrated care planning platform

Suffolk and North East Essex (SNEE) ICS has collaborated with the market-leading openEHR platform provider, Better, to deliver a working proof of concept for a new integrated care planning platform. The Advanced Care Plan will support people with life-limiting conditions by providing them, and their care teams, with real-time access to a single information set that focuses on their specific health and care needs, anticipatory care plans, and wishes.

The project, which was completed in twelve weeks, will significantly reduce the amount of paper being used across the ICS, while also ensuring that care plans are easier to share and more accessible for patients, their families, carers and the services supporting them.

A statement released by SNEE ICS said: “The developed solution has demonstrated a functionality that is capable of sharing information between all care teams irrespective of the employing organisation and most importantly, it places the person at the centre of their care plan. The programme is the first step in the ICS’s strategy to provide a consolidated Advance Care Plan that is centred around the person, across its population of one million.”

The working proof of concept is the first UK implementation of a platform that facilitates care coordination and brings together expertise and knowledge of open standards from across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Through place-based and system-level working, Better has taken a leading role in the development of the solution, applying its open health data platform and low code tools to help clinicians rapidly build the “dynamic” clinical app.

Matthew Cox, MD for Better UK said: “The key to success of the project was the fantastic engagement right across the region led by the clinical teams and underpinned by core principles of an open platform approach with the separation of data from the application. With our low code tools and health data platform, this approach allowed the project team to rapidly prototype and evolve the solution, learning and refining without the need for multiple integration of data from different existing systems.”

CARE IS, a provider of clinically-commissioned information solutions, worked on the integration of the solution with the GP EHRs:EMIS and SystmOne. With the support of patient groups and the SNEE ICS digital team, Cohesion Medical, developed the patient app that allows instant and secure access for users to contribute their wishes into the same clinical record. Better is now working with SNEE ICS and partners to pilot the solution within the West Suffolk Alliance. This will include participation of multiple agencies: emergency response agencies, GPs, community nursing teams, St Nicholas Hospice, care homes and the West Suffolk hospital. If successful in the pilot, it is hoped that the technology will provide a solution to trusted assessment and operational communication challenges across health and social care.

Barbara Gale, Chief Executive, St Nicholas Care, said: “For many years people have expressed the problems of having to repeat their story to different professionals about what is important to them and what they might wish to happen if they were dying. This project offers a solution to that problem and could play a vital role in improving the quality of care at such a difficult time in people's lives.”

Kate Walker, Digital Programme Director, Suffolk & North East Essex ICS, said: “The possibility of a single digital record that is accessible by whoever needs to see it, enabling granular access rights as required by their role, and with secure operation over NHS or public facing internet has alluded IT systems.  This programme demonstrates this capability and presents opportunities with potential futures benefits across health and care.”