Shared experiences and the chance to air common concerns and issues were a key part of the recent national Local Health and Care Record conference in London. Katharine Guthrie, Wessex Local Health and Care Record stakeholder manager, reports
The first Local Health & Care Record Programme Conference took place in London at the end of January, attended by representatives from the first and second wave of Local Health & Care Records Exemplars (LHCRE). The day was an opportunity for each LHCRE to share their thoughts on progress so far, the challenges encountered and the lessons learnt!
The Rt Hon Matt Hancock, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, gave the keynote speech where he reiterated the importance of embracing standards and interoperability to better share information across care and health. He also emphasised that now is the moment for the wider care network to seize digital transformation opportunities.
Next up were Chief Clinical Information Officer (CCIO) for Health and Care, Simon Eccles and Chief Information Officer (CIO) Health and Care, Will Smart, who gave their thoughts about the digital requirements and developments needed to support the delivery of the NHS Long Term Plan. The LHCR programme is in integral part of the plan and Simon and Will both reiterated the importance of shared records to proactively managed the outcomes of populations, to enable access to pertinent information when you need it and to proactively intervene to address gaps in care. Each LHCRE’s Senior Responsible Officer (SRO) then delivered an update on their programme, highlighting their successes to date and their aims for the future.
The afternoon session enabled attendees to meet people working in other LHCREs on similar work streams (e.g. Health and Care professionals, Cyber and Architecture, Local Government and Benefits and Outcomes) and share their experiences of dealing with issues such as consent, public engagement and inter-LHCE connectivity. Key outputs from the day included agreement around building a common approach to certain key topics, e.g. clinical engagement, use of terminology/language (especially around Information Governance), local government engagement and a roadmap for shared record development and building clinical use case scenarios. The Health and Care professionals group spent some time discussing the future development of a core record and how best to build user cases to test this work.
The conference was a valuable opportunity for NHS and local authority colleagues working in different parts of the country to share experiences, discuss common concerns and issues and to celebrate their own and each other’s successes.