Using GP data as the foundation for information sharing

Healthcare Gateway develops, implements and supports the Medical Interoperability Gateway, or MIG, that enables the real-time exchange of patient information between health and care settings. At the heart of the MIG is the Detailed Care Record (DCR) Service that enables ten categories of information from a patient’s GP record to be shared in real-time with trusted third party applications, either as an HTML view or structured data.

The majority of Orion Health’s customers who have deployed integrated digital care records use the MIG to share GP information with health and care professionals working in other care settings.

Ben Wilson, product specialist lead, Orion Health, says the company can and does extract information from GP systems in other ways. However, integration with the MIG simplifies the process; particularly if there is a “mixed economy” of primary care systems in use across a healthcare economy.

Delivering benefits from a single feed

Being able to share patient information, such as demographics, diagnoses, allergies and medications can deliver big benefits to healthcare economies, health and care professionals and their patients. Health and care professionals can use this information to make informed treatment decisions faster and provide the most appropriate care.

Bristol-based Connecting Care, which has developed into one of the most mature information sharing projects in the country, started by sharing this key information with users right away when its first phase went live in 2013. Today, more than 6,000 health and care professionals have access to the shared care record across the region.

The benefits of access to a patients’ GP information for care providers in the region are far-reaching, as evidenced in this account from a team leader with the Dementia Wellbeing Team.