Cambridgeshire County Council to use EDRM for centralised electronic social care records
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This will create a central repository of adult and children's social services records as required by the Department of Health's Electronic Social Care Records guidelines, whilst improving workflow management. The project will provide 2,000 social care workers with secure 24/7 access to every social care record held and created within the county of Cambridgeshire.
Morse has worked closely over the last year with Cambridgeshire County Council to ensure that the implementation of Wisdom eDRMS meets the Council's requirement to change the processes around record creation, storage and access. The original contract for the adult records programme is worth £600,000.
'In many organisations, records are held anywhere from an envelope to a filing cabinet to a hard drive, and in multiple locations. This can make finding all the records relating to an individual both time consuming and labour intensive,' said Cambridgeshire County Council Deputy Chief Executive (Children and Young People's Services) Gordon Jeyes. 'We needed something that will allow 24 hour access to all records from any office in Cambridgeshire, providing a complete case history as is required. Having access to an individual's case history will mean we can work more efficiently and effectively.'
Software installation began in January 2008, and a pilot of the system will begin later this year. Wisdom eDRMS is being integrated with the existing Anite Swift Centralised Indexing System for adult social care records, while for children's records it will operate alongside Capita's ‘One Vision' product in accordance with the Government's ‘Every Child Matters' framework.
The integrated system holds numerous benefits for a department like social services. Wisdom will allow all records to be held in one central repository accessible from all county council offices, and for records to be downloaded to case workers' laptops to allow for access during client visits. In addition, workflow processes will become increasingly efficient, with a level of automation to minimise human error. When a letter or form is received it will be scanned and the data captured and processed, via Wisdom's Enterprise Workflow module, in order to determine if it is related to an existing case. If it is, the document will be automatically added to the relevant file and management will be made aware by e-mail, SMS or addition of an action to a task list. If the document represents a new case, the system will create a new case file.
Morse is working with the Council to ensure effective implementation with minimal disruption, allowing it to get the most out of the Wisdom Product Suite whilst moving towards meeting the Council's corporate aims around transformational government. As the Council has purchased an enterprise licence from Morse, the project will gradually be expanded to include other departments across the organisation. Interest has already been expressed by the Trading Standards department, amongst others. Eventually over 4,000 Council employees could benefit from more efficient access to documents and workflow processes.
'Cambridgeshire County Council has demonstrated real forward thinking in the discussions we have been having. Rather than just seeing Wisdom as a point solution to help improve access to social care records, the Council is taking a strategic approach. It is looking at how eDRMS technology can help improve effectiveness and efficiency across the board,' said Simon Forster, Head of Enterprise Content Management at Morse. 'With increased efficiency comes lower costs, and we are really excited about being able to advise the Council further on how and where they can make the most of the technology available to them.'
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