The System C & Graphnet Care Alliance is pleased to announce that it has completed the phase one integration of its CareCentric shared care record to the new NHS Digital National Record Locator Service. This integration is the highest volume use of the new record locator and it has gone into live use today, 27th November.

This initial deployment adds 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. It does this via the Cheshire shared care record, which is built with Graphnet’s CareCentric software.

This project will enable 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. The aim is to prevent individuals with mental health problems being inappropriately admitted to A&E, with important anticipated benefits in terms of patient experience and outcomes, and also for patient and staff safety and service efficiency.

The record locator link has been achieved using nationally approved UK FHIR integration and this link is a component of the wider System C & Graphnet Care Alliance FHIR strategy announced in September this year. This FHIR strategy is moving at great pace, with nearly 100 delegates representing 50 health and social care providers from all care settings attending a detailed Care Alliance FHIR API interoperability workshop today.

Further iterations of record locator development are already underway with the aim of allowing CareCentric shared care records to publish the locations of all record types, including detailed mental health crisis plans. This will be rolled out in phases as data sharing agreements are signed and national FHIR messages are released.

Adrian Burke, clinical lead for the National Record Locator Service and the CCIO at the CWP, said: “The addition of mental health information to the record locator is a giant step forward in terms of integrating care models and I am delighted with how the NHS Digital team, Graphnet and CWP worked so well together to get record locator integration over the line. The degree of commitment and energy expended has been colossal.”

The National Record Locator Service was launched today in a series of events, including at the System C & Graphnet Care Alliance FHIR API workshop. Speaking to delegates at the workshop, Hadleigh Stollar, integrating care programme manager at NHS Digital, hailed the development as “a critical milestone in the journey towards patient centred, integrated care enabled through a nationally supported and agnostic capability”. The first use-case partners will be North West, North East, Yorkshire and London Ambulance Services – working with their local mental health trusts; Cumbria Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, Humber NHS Foundation Trust, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust and Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHS Foundation Trust.

Beverley Bryant, chief operating officer for the System C & Graphnet Care Alliance said: “CareCentric deployments now cover around 13m patients across the UK and sharing records securely across geographical boundaries is an important next step. The development of national services such as the record locator and the roll out of FHIR standards across care settings accelerate our ability to meet this goal and we are delighted to be making rapid progress.”