Health and social care providers across the country will benefit from £78 million this year to invest in technology and help them move from paper-based clinical records to integrated digital care records.
£43 million of Integrated Digital Care funding will be used by NHS Trusts and Local Authorities to put in place electronic information systems which make sharing information between care settings easier and ensure that patients only tell their story once.
Approval has also been granted for the second tranche of the Nursing Technology Fund which makes £35 million available to Trusts, health charities and community health providers to spend on digital services that will support nurses, midwives and healthcare assistants in their work and help them release time to care.
Beverley Bryant, Director of Strategic Systems and Technology at NHS England, said: “We are committed to a digital strategy to help transform health services through technology and put patients in control of their care and welcome the latest investment in the Integrated Digital Care fund which will help to digitise and integrate patient information across health and social care, enabling safer, more joined up services.”
Jane Cummings, Chief Nursing Officer for England, added: “The Nursing Technology Fund has supported nurses, midwives and care staff to carry out valuable and innovative work, and will continue to empower staff to deliver safer, more effective and more efficient care.”
Adrian Byrne, Director of Information Management and Technology at University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust and successful applicant of the Integrated Digital Care Fund said: “We’re delighted to be the recipient of an award that will allow us to advance paperless working by implementing an electronic document management system. It will also greatly assist us in cutting down costs by moving out of an existing shared library facility currently holding around one million patient records.”
A full list of recipients of the Nursing Technology Fund is available on our website. Awards have gone to a range of organisations including:
Marie Curie Cancer Care – awarded £1M for their Connected Nursing project to enable mobile access to digital care records, digital capture of clinical data at point-of-care.
Milton Keynes Hospital NHS Foundation Trust – awarded £646K for their Paperless Nurse Observations project to allow nurses, midwives and care staff to capture of vital signs and Early Warning Scores at the bedside in real-time.
Devon Partnership NHS Trust – awarded £204K for their Video Consultations for Nursing Staff project to equip patients and develop proper therapeutic environments for remote consultations in a community mental health care setting.
Secretary of State for Health Jeremey Hunt and NHS England Medical Director Professor Sir Bruce Keogh launched the Safer Hospitals, Safer Wards Technology Fund in May 2013 to support NHS providers to move from paper-based systems for patient notes and prescriptions to integrated electronic care records and the development of e-prescribing and e-referral systems. To reflect the key priority of enabling information flow across care settings, the fund has now been renamed the Integrated Digital Care fund.
The Nursing Technology Fund was announced by the Prime Minister in October 2012 to support nurses and midwives to make better use of digital technology in care settings.
NHS England is responsible for deploying both technology funds to facilitate the widespread adoption of modern practices and safe standards of electronic record-keeping.
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