Greater Manchester appoints suppliers to create a digital health platform

Greater Manchester has appointed a number of suppliers to help create a digital platform that will support the transformation of public services and empower people to take control over their own health, wellbeing and support. 

The Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership (GMHSCP) and the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) are working together to invest £7.5m in new technologies that support better ways of working, and join-up data from the many systems across public services.

The technology will first be developed and used in the areas of dementia, frailty and health visiting.

The process is being jointly overseen by the GMCA and Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust, part of the Northern Care Alliance, on behalf of the GMHSCP.

The technology solutions form part of Greater Manchester’s part in the Local Health and Care Record (LHCR) programme.

Following a competitive procurement process, the following suppliers have now been selected to deliver various technology components:

• Civica has been appointed to develop an enterprise master patient index, which ensures information shared between systems is safely attached to the correct person’s records.
• Philips Forcare has been selected to develop a record locator service, which allows different systems to find and retrieve records relevant to an individual in different care settings.
• Objectivity Ltd has been appointed to develop a citizen app, based on the Mendix low-code platform.
• ANS are providing cloud consultancy and services to the programme to achieve a ‘cloud first’ approach to deployment.

These solutions are in addition to the local shared care records in place across the city region. This platform is supported by Graphnet’s CareCentric system.

Consultancy firm Accenture has been appointed to provide additional programme assurance and to support the design, configuration and testing of the technology solutions.

Stephen Dobson, chief digital officer at the GMHSCP, said: “Our digital programme is driving a new way of thinking about how we connect systems across GM and work together with suppliers to build on our collective strengths.

“It will increase our ability to involve people in what happens with personal data, enhance the use information for direct care and increase the rate at which we can adopt new technologies.”