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Leeds trail blazing with an open platform Person Held Record

Leeds is leading the way in developing and piloting an open platform based Person Held Record (PHR) for local people.  It follows extensive engagement with individuals, care professionals and stakeholders across the city to understand their needs and aspirations. It is believed a PHR will help people to better manage and control their own care and wellbeing and help prevent further health issues.

The PHR programme will be led by Leeds City Council in partnership with NHS organisations across the city.  The technology will be built on an internationally leading open source platform for the health and care sector, developed in Leeds by the Ripple Foundation.  Leeds’ philosophy around digital technology of simplify, standardise and share allows flexibility and scalability with the intention to share easily with others across the nation.

Phase one will enable people to register, verify their identity and log into their PHR. It will let people contribute and update information about themselves, for example, a top three things to know about me.  It will also integrate with the Leeds Care Record that is widely used by care professionals across the city.

Councillor Rebecca Charlwood, Chair of the Leeds Health and Wellbeing Board said, “Leeds is the second largest city in the UK outside London, with a diverse population of over 770,000 people. We need to nurture a health and care system where people have more conversations and opportunities to help unlock the best solutions for them. The Person Held Record programme is a key enabler of this work.”

 

“The city of Leeds has the skills and ability to create cutting edge technology for its citizens. The decision to develop a Person Held Record is another clear example”, said Dylan Roberts, chief digital and information officer for Leeds City Council.  “We will work closely with the people of Leeds, care professionals and national organisations to ensure any technology we build and implement can be reused across the nation.”

 

Dr Jason Broch, GP partner at Oakwood Lane Medical Practice and Chair of the Leeds Informatics Board said, “Patients need to access their record to allow them to understand their health and wellbeing better and input their own information to take a more active role. It is the missing piece of the jigsaw towards truly integrated care.  In Leeds we believe a Person Held Record will be central to this change.”

 

Leeds is also hoping the market will help create apps and functionality that will work with the open platform because they conform to the standards set. For example, if you have a chronic long term condition, you will be able to personalise your PHR with this information, allowing for a more joined up view.

Dr Tony Shannon, Director at Ripple Foundation added, “Healthcare is suffering from an underperforming health IT sector which makes it harder for care professionals to work with their patients efficiently and effectively.  By building their Person Held Record on an open platform, in line with the international open EHR standard, Leeds has started a transformational move to future proof its healthcare IT systems. 

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  <span style="font-weight: 400;">Tony continued, “Ripple Foundation’s mission is to improve the care of patients and citizens alike by providing technology that supports their needs and delivers easy to use systems that are scalable and cost effective.”</span>
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For further information about the Person Held Record in Leeds please contact dylan.roberts@leeds.gov.uk If you are interested in the technology of an open platform please contact info@ripple.foundation

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We want Open Source to spread by Dylan Roberts

The article below was published on the Local Digital website on 23 September 2015

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Change story number 2: Story of Us

Integration Pioneers in the 21st Century

There is a widely held view that 21st century care is under pressure, in a state of near-crisis in many places (ref #NHSwinter) where the burden of disease and the limitations of current health and social care systems are becoming ever more apparent.  We know that at the frontline, staff are already working under immense pressure, in unsustainable ways and that change is needed. We must find ways to “work smarter, not harder”.  So we must also find ways to improve the quality, safety, timeliness and cost effectiveness of 21st century care.

Of course,  the change that 21st century care needs will require strong leadership and changes in the way staff work at the coalface, and one question that presents itself is around the role of technology and specifically information technology.

Health and care commentators are, for the most part, all agreed that Information Technology is a key driver for change, while many are also aware that its great potential remains untapped. The gap between the hope and the reality of the promise of improving care via effective IT remains one of the key challenges facing us today.

In exploring this challenge, there is a view that the health and care IT market is not as good as it could be, lacking leadership and a mixed bag of technologies on offer with vendor lock-in a real issue.

Quite often it is still too hard to;

  • share citizen and patient information between providers and across city and district boundaries
  • adapt care pathways in a way that combines Lean thinking with a flexible information system
  • support the audit of care and research which for the most part is done by duplicating effort with cumbersome “back-room” processes.

It would be hard to contest the fact that the current state of the health IT market is holding us all back from the advances that 21st Century health and social care demands.

So is there an alternative path?

Leeds is one of 25 integration pioneers chosen to lead the way on the integration of health and social care through; new ways of working for staff, process redesign and integrated digital care records. Many are at early stages for this work but all with the same focus to improve care and work smarter.

Leeds, as part of an effort to positively disrupt the market, has ploughed its own pioneering path in this field via a mix of open source and open standards to underpin the Leeds PPM+ platform which now powers the Leeds Care Record. Great progress continues to be made on both fronts and positive feedback from both users and citizens alike is emerging, but Leeds believes it would benefit by contributing to and working with a broader community.

Recognising this need for change, to collaborate and to support integration pioneers, Leeds City Council on behalf of the city and with the support of the integration pioneers submitted a successful bid for the second phase of NHS England’s Integrated Digital Care Technology Fund. With the clinical leadership of Dr Tony Shannon, we are now reaching out to work with those 24 other integration pioneers who want to be part of Ripple community which is focussed along 6 open strands:

  1. Open Requirements
  2. Open Governance
  3. Open Citizen
  4. Open Viewer
  5. Open Integration
  6. Open Architecture

We hope that in sharing our challenges, our learning and our efforts, we can kickstart a real health and social care community effort. We are keen to collaborate with all others who recognise this story and share this vision, who choose to take this path together.

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