Standards for document sharing will be a huge help for an NHS trying to beat its dependence on paper

Tony Backhouse, head of SynApps Solutions’ Health Practice, believes standards for document sharing will be a huge help for an NHS trying to beat its dependence on paper.

A key goal of the NHS: be digital – ‘paperless’ – by 2018. That much is certain. However, what is often not appreciated is how far we are from achieving it – as the NHS is still very reliant paper.

As it stands, even in 2015, paper-based medical records still have travel between hospital departments, following the patient. It’s an expensive and cumbersome way to manage this information, even if it’s the approach we’ve always used. In order to meet the challenge, hospitals are implementing electronic document management or records management systems in order to manage their information digitally, and make it available for both the clinician and the patient at the point of care.

The challenge is formidable – in particular, providing access to this electronic content beyond the Trust, which is the next step hospitals are going to have to take if they are serious about moving to integrate health and social care at anything more than a trivial level.

Read the full article published in 24NBiz here