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Information sharing between professionals and patients needs to be effective and support evolving models of care, whilst reaching beyond organisations and geographies. Secretary of Health and Social Care Matt Hancock highlighted the importance of interoperability within the NHS after his recent overnight shift at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. The ability of digital tools like DrDoctor to integrate and operate with other IT systems is essential for helping the NHS optimise patient outcomes and quality of care provided.
The Local Health and Care Record (LHCR) programme is designed to support best practice in the collection, protection, and ethical use of health and care data to reach further and go faster and to encourage their adoption.
We have proven success in secondary care, and the next generation of DrDoctor will provide the patient layer across all regions and care settings. Our work here at DrDoctor supports cross-care initiatives, such as LHCR, as we recognise the importance of patients preferring a single point of contact into the healthcare system. To realise these ambitions, we must all work together. Alongside the NHS, interoperability must be seen as an integral part of product roadmaps within all tech providers. Our solution enables all data to be combined into a record which is meaningful for the patient and can be accessed seamlessly within our platform. A single interface into the system allows everyone to access their care in one place, irrespective of the care setting.
The DrDoctor solution currently integrates via HL7 or SSIS and we are soon to expand our reach using CareConnect and GPConnect APIs. We already provide our partner trusts with access to their data for reporting purposes, and we are working on bi-directional integration to automate processes even further. We are an active member of INTEROpen, supporting their progress on building open standards, and joining up the conversation between providers and industry organisations.
We have also signed up to TechUK’s Interoperability charter to further demonstrate our commitment to interoperability standards. This means in practice that we have agreed to adhere to the following five conditions:
- We will make available to other suppliers, the NHS and Local Authorities, the technical specifications of our interfaces without charge.
- Where there is customer demand we agree to co-operate without charge with other suppliers in developing interfaces.
- We will not reinvent the wheel and will use internationally recognised standards where relevant.
- We will only charge reasonable and proportionate fees to the end user organisation for Licensing, Implementation and Support services required for the interfaces.
- Where new interfaces or enhancements to existing interfaces are required, we will not charge twice for the same software development.
Our mission is to provide and deliver an integrated service to patients so that irrespective of their care setting they can interface with a single platform that holds all record of their individual interactions with healthcare services. More integrated collaboration is needed in the NHS to enable both healthcare professionals and patients to better manage care. At DrDoctor, we are motivated and committed to doing our part and working in partnership with organisations throughout the health and care sector.
