Kettering General Hospital embarks on digital medical records project

Kettering General Hospital NHS Foundation Trust is embarking on a major medical records digitalisation project with partners System C, IMMJ Systems and Swiss Post Solutions (SPS).

As part of the trust’s 10-year digital transformation plan, more than 220,000 medical records will be scanned into the IMMJ Systems MediViewer Electronic Document Management System (EDMS).

The EDMS software integrates seamlessly with System C’s CareFlow EPR so that all clinical and clerical users can view the complete history for every patient within the trust. The final element of the project is provided by SPS who has been contracted to digitise all active patient records for the trust.

By fully digitalising patient records, the trust is aiming to improve patient care by delivering mobile clinical and decision making support to clinicians. Healthcare professionals will have instant and secure access to scanned medical records via the EPR. It will also be searchable thanks to the MediViewer SmartIndexing technology, which classifies information.

Andy Callow, group chief digital information officer for the trust, said: “Our ambition is to be the most digital hospital group in England by July 2023. Achieving that would mean clinicians are given excellent tools that give them back time to care, patients are in control of their treatment, managers have instant information to drive decision-making and all staff have access to amazing training and support.

“Starting to scan paper records at Kettering is something we’ve been looking forward to as it is a really important milestone on our journey.”

Previously, the trust was the first to go live with System C’s Patient Flow software, a key part of the CareFlow integrated EPR.