Yorkshire and Humber commits to more integrated care

The Yorkshire and Humber Local Health and Care Record Exemplar (LHCRE) bidding consortia has announced that it plans to deliver a “cohort of the willing” regardless of the outcome of its LHCRE bid.

The cohort has agreed on a number of principles and put in place a series of actions that they believe will see them move forward with a more integrated approach to care in the region, whether or not they are selected as one of five regional LHCRE cohorts by NHS England in May.

The delivery of an open standards and open platform-based person held record (PHR) – originally conceived as a Leeds City-wide project in 2017 – has now been made available to the whole LHCRE cohort geography.

The project, dubbed ‘Helm’, will see a number initiatives go live this year, including an ‘eBook’ for maternity and the concept of “three things you need to know about me” being recorded by the patient and then being added to their health record across acute, primary and community care.

Bi-directional communication between diabetes patients and clinicians will also be put into practice, allowing patients to add to their own records.

The PHR has been built in such a way so that it will be accessible across geographies regardless of the clinical system in use within a specific trust – whether it’s Cerner, DXC Lorenzo or the Leeds and mid-Yorkshire PPM+ solution.

The Yorkshire and Humber has offered all of the invited LHCRE geographies to get in touch with a copy of their PHR element in their response.

Nine regions have been invited to bid for £7.4m over two years, which bidders will be expected to match fund.

Each regional LHCRE will build on existing work on shared records, with a view to further develop joined-up regional health and care information reference sites.

Richard Corbridge, SRO for the Yorkshire and Humber bid, said: “The need for us to support the delivery of a new vision of integrated care through the availability of information is clearly defined in the request for responses to the LHCRE bid.

“In our area we feel one of the key components of the delivery of integrated care is the patient, a resource of information that if connected can offer critical insight into the care needed, maybe the LHCRE system of systems approach will be the first time we truly digitally connect a large cohort of patients to the care they are receiving.”  

The cohort will also offer College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) accredited learning and qualification to the 25 informatics leaders across the geography, as a single learning group.

A spokesperson from the Yorkshire and Humber group said: “This opportunity has been put together to enable the leadership of the cohort to build, to come together and share lessons learnt and to ensure that the learning opportunity of creating the team is not missed.”

The LHCRE responses due today (26 April). Several of the LHCRE bidding consortia will present their vision of the future at this year’s Digital Health Summer School, being held on 19-20 July.