National Record Locator Service Wins Digital Innovation Award.

A new national information-sharing service which the System C & Graphnet Care Alliance went live with on its launch day, has scooped the Public Service Innovation of the Year award.

The awards, run by Digital Leaders 100, were set-up to celebrate teams and individuals who are working hard behind the scenes to secure effective, long-term digital transformation.

NHS Digital created the new National Record Locator Service to enable NHS clinicians and NHS organisation to securely locate patient information held by other health organisations.

The first deployment involved adding locator records for patients who have a referral to the Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (CWP), a mental health and community service provider. This process is generated via the Cheshire shared care record, which is powered by Graphnet’s CareCentric software.

The project enables paramedics who are called out to a patient to remotely access that patient’s information to support their direct care. Effectively paramedics can quickly find out whether a patient has a mental health crisis plan and if so, contact the service responsible for the plan to support the individual in crisis and avoid inappropriately admitting the patient to A&E.

Graphnet achieved the link to the national service using nationally approved UK FHIR integration. The connection is a component of the wider System C & Graphnet Care Alliance FHIR strategy announced last year.

Hadleigh Stollar, National Record Locator programme head, NHS Digital, said:

The hard work that has gone into developing the National Record Locator has had a real positive impact of frontline staff and patients, all who benefit from better clinical decision-making thanks to the ability to make better and richer patient information to those at the forefront of delivering care.  Well done and congratulations to all the team who have helped make this happen.

Beverley Bryant, chief operating officer for the System C & Graphnet Care Alliance said:

I’m delighted the National Record Locator Service has received this well-deserved recognition. We are very proud to be involved in a project that is breaking down barriers and sharing records securely across geographical boundaries to make a real difference to patients and NHS staff.