Heart of England makes big digitisation push

A five year, £7m contract to digitise patient records at Heart of England Foundation Trust will offer “anytime, anywhere” access to patient notes, the Trust says.

 

The contact to digitise its patient records was awarded to EDM Group last year to convert millions of paper records from three trust sites into electronic format.

 

Once digitised, the records can be accessed through the trust's online workflow system, and following data quality check, paper-based records will be destroyed around 90 days later.

 

Andy Laverick, the Trust's director of IT, said a massive increase in the number of patient records was a significant driver. “The number of patient records was increasing by around 40,000 to 50,000 a year and there was discussion around whether to build a shed to hold them," he said.

 

Digitising the records will cut the cost of physical storage and transportation, as well as hidden costs around the timely management of notes, Laverick said.

 

Scanning of the records began in April last year. The digitisation process is expected to take years to complete, due to both the volume of paper involved and the time that preparing the documents to be scanned will take. Laverick estimates there are between 200m and 300m separate paper elements to deal with.