Scotland’s Golden Jubilee Hospital goes live with patient portal pilot
A major Scottish hospital has gone live with a patient portal pilot from Orion Health, in one of the first of its kind in the country.
The Golden Jubilee National Hospital has given 40 pulmonary hypertensive patients access to the portal last month.
The patients are part of the Scottish Adult Congenital Cardiac Service, and can access their up to date records and appointments and can share the information with clinicians.
Sally Smith, head of eHealth at the hospital, said the patient portal “provides staff with an electronic method of providing information and communicating with patients”.
Benefits to patients include improved access to information and current clinical summary, Smith said. Advantages to clinicians include a quicker direct means of communication with patients, she said.
The hospital says the patient portal is one of the first to be deployed in the country. Scotland’s eHealth strategy says that by 2020, the governments wants citizens to access their own health record through a patient portal, and make their own contributions.
Orion has provided a clinical portal for the hospital since 2011.
The supplier is also behind the connecting of clinical portals across the west of Scotland. In April 2016, Digital Health News reported that phase one of the project was due to go live to connect NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde’s portal with NHS Lanarkshire’s.
Smith said that in the next phase of the Golden Jubilee pilot could include providing patients with access to a health library, appointments, medicines, test results, clinical summary, clinical documentation, goal setting, and secure messaging and the ability for patients to directly upload data, documents and images.
This side of the border, University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has been using a patient portal since 2013, for its cancer patients.
In the same year, University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust also registered more than 2,400 users for its myhealth@QEHB patient platform.
Colin Henderson, vice president EMEA at Orion, said it was “exciting” to take the hospital and supplier’s relationship to the “next level with the development and launch of the patient portal”.
“It is particularly exciting to be partnering with Golden Jubilee on this initiative given their national reach and strong innovation credentials.”
The Scottish hospital is home to regional and national heart and lung services, and is a major centre for orthopaedics.
