Warrington and Halton integrates EPR with GP Connect

Warrington and Halton Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has gone live with the integration of its electronic patient record (EPR) with NHS Digital’s GP Connect products.

As a result, clinicians using Dedalus’ EPR can now view key clinical information from GP systems in the hospital’s EPR at the point of care.

Healthcare professionals at the trust can securely access GP medication and allergy records. They can also view and import a patient’s current medication status. This additional information supports ongoing treatment decisions, improving both care and patient outcomes.

Peter Abraham, lead pharmacist for EPMA, homecare, medicines management and ophthalmology at Warrington and Halton, said: “Integrating GP Connect with Dedalus’ EPR has benefits for staff and patients, improving decisions and saving time.

“We can obtain and validate medication and allergy data from GP Connect for adding to a patient record in the EPR, in the knowledge that the data is consistent and secure.”

GP Connect is part of the wider interoperability strategy from the now-defunct NHS Digital.

It allows authorised clinical staff to share and view GP practice clinical information and data between IT systems, quickly and efficiently. By doing so, staff have the most up-to-date information available to them to support effective decision-making.

The service provides a more secure information transfer using Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), removing the need to use less secure methods such as email or fax.

Colin Henderson, managing director UK and Ireland at Dedalus, said: “The trust is leading the way in the integration of GP Connect to their EPR. More integrated ways of working across health and care are reliant on the ability of IT systems to be interoperable to enable care professionals and patients to better manage care, Warrington and Halton are embracing this through GP Connect.”

NHS Digital ceased to exist from the start of this month, as it merged into NHS England’s Transformation Directorate.