North East London connects to NEMS in partnership with Servelec

North East London Foundation Trust has gone live with the National Event Management Service in partnership with Servelec.

Servelec is one of the first suppliers to connect to the National Event Management Service (NEMS), an initiative led by NHS Digital, to provide digital messages to trusts from multiple organisations. The service aims to promote interoperability between the trust’s child health services.

Data flows between the Rio electronic patient record (EPR) and GPs, child health information services, maternity, health visiting and other NEMS platforms. The data gives clinicians instant access to data they need to provide care to patients.

The trust, which has used Rio since 2009, began the implementation in 2019 and now has automatic access to the messages including new birth notifications, GP updates, address updates, death notifications, NIPE (Newborn and Infant Physical Examination screening) results, newborn hearing results, bloodspot results and professional contacts.

Sean Flynn, EPR systems manager at the trust, said: “We are keen to get the most out of our EPR system. This is why when we were approached about being the first of type for NEMS for Rio we grabbed it with both hands.

“Ultimately it has improved service delivery, and for staff it has reduced the number of inefficient new birth visits significantly. This has helped us demonstrate to our patients that NELFT [North East London Foundation Trust] is an efficient and effective service.

“NEMS and Servelec have helped NELFT meet its priorities by providing accurate data and reducing fragmentation – helping to join up our targeted and universal services and our wider health network.”

The trust now receives about 800 messages a day, which were previously entered into the system manually. Through automating these messages it’s hoped quality and safety will be improved, including a reduction in the duplication of work.

Through connecting the NEMS the trust can now work collaboratively with partner agencies to enable better data sharing with local authorities or other healthcare organisations.

It has also been able to provide patients with an eRedbook service, a digital version of the Redbook given to parents or family when a baby is born. It provides parents and carers with an easy to access, current record of critical information on their child’s healthcare journey, such as immunisation records, creating a long-term health record for the child and offering up to date advice for parents.

The Department of Health and Social Care recently announced it was bringing forward the date that all personal child health records are required to be digitised by.

This will apply to every new birth from April 2023, a year earlier than originally planned. The NHS Long Term Plan, published in January 2019, promised a digital version of the Redbook would be made available to the whole country by 2023/24.

Karen Ventura, head of interoperability at Servelec, added: “When we started this journey with NELFT we set out to put interoperability at the heart of everything we do.

“By connecting Rio up nationally using the FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) message standards we could facilitate the automatic receipt of data into the system from multiple sources – this was an exciting prospect and as a result this development became a priority for us.

“Connecting Rio up to NEMS for NELFT, and to the healthy child programme, will provide people, organisations, commissioners, staff and patients with a better digital experience, we believe it has the potential to improve people’s lives with technology that matters, which is a key goal for Servelec.”