As part of Digital Dorset’s Festival of the Future Health and Social Care Day, the Dorset Care Record’s communications and engagement officer Tony McDougal interviewed the DCR’s Senior Responsible Owner Peter Gill and the Operational lead for public facing digital health technologies Crystal Dennis
Tony McDougal – So Peter, as Senior Responsible Owner for the Dorset Care Record, how is the record making a difference to the lives of clinicians and the public? What are the benefits of having a shared care record and does data really save lives?
Peter Gill – So, I think the simple message is instant access to critical information to the DCR which is hard to get to through other mechanisms. Previously people would have had to call through to a GP – a GP receptionist to try and speak to a GP to ask their GP for some information and that person may be coming from a busy emergency department and try to make those calls while the patient is in front of them would be very time consuming and possibly not even effective. Maybe the GP couldn’t come to the phone and describe what they know about the patient. So those very old fashioned processes have now been replaced by clinicians across UHD and social care staff at a click of a button whilst already in their core electronic record they use every day they can now click through to the DCR and have critical information that primary care, Dorset County, UHD knows about the patient and client in front of them.
So, a huge time-saving for clinical staff – as we know they have been under immense pressure, they always are but the last 18 months have been accelerated there. That’s a massive benefit for clinical staff. We see that in the records accessed on a monthly basis, which have been growing. I am absolutely delighted, it’s my favourite statistic to look at on a monthly basis to see that’s been growing. I think we are around about 42,000 at the moment, as memory serves, in terms of records accessed in August.. which is just a joy to see.
Does it save lives? Well I believe it does. We have had one direct recognition that Dorset Care Record has saved a life. I suspect there are hundreds or thousands of times where Dorset Care Record contributed to life-saving care but the one that we wrote up some months ago was in DCH where someone known to the mental health services accessing Dorset County Hospital’s ED with I think a cardiology presentation and if this guy had not accessed the Dorset Care Record he might not have realised that this was indeed a cardiology rather than a mental health incident.
Tony McDougal: So Crystal, turning to the personal health record, how will myDCR empower people to take care of their health? What will it enable people to do in the early moments and in the longer-term?
Crystal Dennis: It’s going to enable people to carry around their records like a digital passport so in the first wave of functionality that we have for myDCR they going to be able to have a look at their medications, their conditions, they’ll be able to see previous events, view their up and coming appointments and they’ll be able to share files. Their clinicians and their clinical teams will be able to share files with them and their team. One of the great things is that instead of having lots of different points where we say to somebody have a look at this URL or this website for advice and guidance we are going to bring all of those kind of key points into one for myDCSo you’ll have one point of navigation so you won’t have to remember anything other than logging into myDCR and you’ll be able to see things like access to other digital health tools, a video library, as well as anything that has been shared with you by your clinical team. And what’s exciting about this is that as we continue to grow the functionality of this platform you’ll just start to see it becoming more valuable, so we’re going to make it a really good user experience. We want to make sure that people are using this for the best of their health and well-being.
Tony McDougal: Finally, a question for both of you. How does the DCR/myDCR fit into the wider digital agenda? Dorset with this festival is getting really renowned for its digital prowess and putting us on the map for the digital health and social care agenda, so how do you think that DCR/myDCR will fit into that?
Peter Gill: It’s essential – utterly essential to the Dorset digital strategy. It is one of our proudest achievements and something that we will grow. We have about 50% of the data feeds into it. We have huge ambition to get 92 data feeds and we’ve got around about 49 I think, so just over 50% of the feeds. There are more feeds to come, particularly from social care and community mental health services and some from the trust I work at, University Hospitals Dorset. More data to feed in and that was round one and so I suspect that once we’ve achieved all that we’ll consider that we’ve got more data which we’ll think is even more valuable and as Crystal’s explained we’ll have this fantastic ecosystem of digital tools and channels for patients and clients to access seamlessly as well. It is the central piece of our strategy going forward.
Crystal Dennis: I completely agree with Peter. There is a lot, particularly in the wake of the pandemic that has come out from our central teams around digitalising, connecting and transforming and this is about connecting all of those pieces so that we’ve got a really good smart foundation to drive forward transformation plans and this is not just about transforming how we use our data as a workforce to make decisions and to accelerated access to decisions at point of care., but most importantly it’s about how we’re helping to enable our population to take care of themselves especially with the shortages of our workforce going forward. This is the biggest threat to the NHS at the moment and to integrated care systems. So, we want to make sure that all of our populations have access to these tools and that they know how to use them and what they are being used for. And so its an absolute essential piece in our foundation to everything that happens from now.
If you want to view the interview and the myDCR animation and walk through of the system by our business analyst Theresa Smith you can find the DCR/myDCR slot from the link below at 1hr 52min and 35 seconds!
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