Orion develop document tracking software

Orion Health are building a new document tracking solution for the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust to help keep track of over seven million paper records across the trust’s 15 sites.

The trust needed a new portal solution to help them to improve access and filing for patient paper notes, which were becoming more difficult to track as different staff used them without a definite record of where they were located or who they were being used by.

Using Orion’s Concerto Medical Applications Portal, a solution is now being developed which will allow clinicians at the trust’s hospitals to make requests electronically for patient notes, regardless of where the notes are stored across the trust’s facilities.

The Concerto platform provides clinicians with the right information where they need it. It works with the organisation’s existing information systems to provide one view of where records are within the trust and who is using it, and enables them to electronically request the patient notes when next available.

Orion’s marketing manager, Richard Cotman, said: “The sort of scale and application is something new and unprecedented." The project has already begun and is due to be completed by the end of the year.

Cotman added: "The portal will sit on the back-end of existing systems and let clinicians or any relevant personnel who want to track the records log-on to the system and find the location of the notes using single sign on.”

Under the new system, patient’s paper records will be barcoded and logged onto a system, so clinicians can see where the notes are and request to be given them when next available.

The requests will be downloaded onto PDAs used by medical records staff in the trust’s medical records library. The PDAs will have bar code readers attached, allowing staff to electronically “check out” the notes as they are removed from the shelves.

Cotman added: “Being able to find patient notes and get them to a clinician as fast as possible is something all trusts should aspire to. Document tracking solutions like this are not part of the national programme, and we feel that trusts should look into this technology as the wait towards an electronic patient record continues.”

Additional benefits of the new system include the ability to request patient notes 24-hours a day; standardisation of medical records processes, and improved efficiency in storage space through the use of a ‘random storage’ system.

The University Hospitals of Leicester’s project manager, Izhar Kler, said: “Traditionally, case note requests at our hospitals have been handled via telephone, fax or email, a process that is labour-intensive.

“The new system we are building in co-operation with Orion Health will reduce the time spent requesting, tracking and chasing case notes and will help improve the quality of our audit and reporting.”

The system will hold data from eight library stores at Leicester’s three hospitals, holding around 1.8 million active patient records combined with an additional 5.2 million specialty records.

Around 4-5,000 UHL staff will be trained to use the document tracking system, with around 500 users anticipated to be accessing the system concurrently.

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