26 August 2014

UH Bristol starts project to digitise paper medical records

Andrew Hooper, responsible for Information Technology and Medical Records at UH Bristol, said: "The system will deliver benefits to patients and Trust staff by creating digital casenotes, which will allow authorised staff to access patient records from anywhere and at any time in the Trust. Evolve will help to drive improved patient safety and experience through giving staff access to timely and accurate information on patients. It will reduce the potential for records to be misplaced, delays in care through waiting for records to be delivered, and the cost of storing physical casenotes, thereby enabling saved time and money to be reinvested back into patient care."

Phase one will set up and configure Evolve and the Trust's scanning bureau. In phase two, Evolve will go live one hospital site at a time, with St Michael's Hospital being the first site. This phase is known as 'paper-light' as, although the historical casenote will be viewed digitally, paper documentation will still be used in outpatient and inpatient settings to capture new information prior to it being scanned into Evolve. Once all hospital sites are live with Evolve, phase three will progressively reduce the amount of paper documentation being created and sent around the organisation by introducing ways of inputting information directly into IT systems. The aim of this phase is to work towards becoming 'paper-free' in the Trust.

The project began phase one in May 2014 and the plan is to go-live in St Michael's Hospital in early 2015. It is anticipated that achieving 'paper-light' working across the whole Trust will take an estimated 18 months from the date of the first site go live.

The Evolve EDM project is part of the Trust's Clinical Systems Implementation Programme with a total cost of delivery of £3.4m over five years and is supported by £1.396m of funding provided from the NHS England Integrated Digital Care Technology Fund.

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