Greater Glasgow and Clyde Health Board increases Electronic Patient Record Uptake by 75% in a Year

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Largest regional Health Board in the UK has 15,500 active users of its innovative clinical portal

London, December 14, 2011 -- Greater Glasgow and Clyde Health Board today is benefiting from the success of one of the largest deployments of a Clinical Portal in Europe. Adopted as the unified Electronic Patient Record (EPR) system for all NHS services in Glasgow and Clyde (a region with a population of 1.2 million), the portal now has 15,500 active users (a 75% annual growth rate), representing more than 33% of all employees in the Board region.

The NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde Health Board is located in west central Scotland and delivers services throughout thirty five major hospitals, ten specialised units and fifty healthcare centres and clinics.

Peak concurrent usage is currently up to 1000 clinical users online at any one time. As a result of this widespread uptake, EPR is now being used systematically by many clinicians, GPs and other health professionals in Glasgow, as part of their daily practice.

In a 2010 report, the Scottish government highlighted the benefits of the Greater Glasgow and Clyde Clinical Portal to health boards across NHS Scotland.  In this report, Dr Gerard McKay, Consultant Physician, Emergency Care and Medical Services Directorate in Glasgow said:

“The use of the Clinical Portal in ward areas gives me easy and quick access to important clinical information, that allows for the safe management of patients, particularly in the acute setting.

I invariably have Clinical Portal open when working in clinic areas as it provides not only an overview of the patient's care but pulls together information that was previously accessed through other systems such as labs, radiology reports and letters. Now I can view them in the one place alongside information about the patient's past and future contacts with the hospital. Additionally information generated from the patients' consultations with me is then available to share with other clinical services.”

Colin Henderson, Managing Director, Orion Health UK & Ireland said today, “The uptake of the clinical portal in Greater Glasgow and Clyde is a credit to the hard work and vision of the Health Board, who recognised early the strategic benefits of a shared unified view of patient information for clinical staff.

“Many local health economies in England are thinking about information sharing, at scale and across care settings. Greater Glasgow and Clyde is proof that the single view concept delivers benefits to a very large and diverse group of end users, who have really embraced the technology. In other similar regional deployments in UK, the measured benefits are equally compelling, with evidence of reduced test orders, improved patient outcomes & more efficient working practices - all because key information is readily accessible.”

About Orion Health Ltd.
Orion Health’s easy-to-use solutions and applications improve patient care and clinical decision-making by providing integrated health data in a single, unified view. By enhancing existing healthcare information systems, the Orion Health Rhapsody™ Integration Engine, Clinical Portal and workflow solutions, provide healthcare workers with easy access to patient data and trends, and reduce errors and omissions by streamlining information transfer.

Worldwide, Orion Health implements health information communities involving over 30 million patients with hundreds of thousands of active users including NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, Spain’s IB Salut, New Zealand Ministry of Health, Maine’s HealthInfoNet, Lahey Clinic, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and Alberta Health Services. Orion Health’s partners include leading health system integrators and IT vendors such as Accenture, Allscripts, IBM, Oracle, Philips and others.

News Source: Greater Glasgow and Clyde Health Board increases Electronic Patient Record Uptake by 75% in a Year