Tags: NHS

A Promising Year Beckons

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Joint CEO and Sales Director Mark Winstone sends out a message of best wishes for 2018

As we come to the end of a very interesting year for the NHS, the Police and general business – in the context of Brexit, on-going digitisation of society and a less predictable international scene, it’s time to reflect on where we are.

What we see and hear from our many NHS, Police and enterprise customers is that while there have been issues for many in the economy, especially for those in the public sector facing austerity, we get a sense that there are signs of real progress.

There has been progress for our customers in trying to get closer to the digital NHS sought (and which will be the best-organised NHS in terms of budget pressure and meeting the demands of a changing society and healthcare environment). We have been working for some time with a large teaching hospital in the North East, for example, that is resulting in a proof of concept demonstrator of ground-breaking medical records sharing.

That project in turn connects up with our work and interest in the Great North Care Record initiative.

This is also even more the case now that we have opened up a new line of business with another important partner, our new Intelligent Metadata Layer proposition (see my last blog : Meet IML – The New Single Window On ALL Your Corporate Information LINK]). That will soon open into a strong business for us – in the same way as our health business powered by Open Source in the form of the Alfresco platform has been introduced into so many NHS Trusts up and down the country. While being talked about for years and not happening enough, at last we are seeing real achievement in the area of connecting DICOM Vendor Neutral Archives with EPRs.

There is also great work commencing in digital Policing and SynApps is at the heart of three hugely important business-social-legal areas of interesting and important work: helping the NHS do a better job, helping the Forces to be more effective in delivering justice and protecting citizen rights, and aiding enterprises make information more productive and useful for them via IML.

SynApps has also entered into an exciting partnership with AWS to enable quick to deploy, low cost, scalable, secure ECM “solutions as a service” with the content residing in the UK.

We see 2018 as being a really promising year for us commercially and we are looking forward to the chance to opening up a dialogue about all the great opportunities with you, our customers, in the next 12 months.

A big seasonal thank you to all our staff, partners and most of all customers – and all good wishes for 2018!

Mark

A Local And Practical Patient Care Project That Works

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SynApps is a proud supporter of a big cross-sector patient medical data initiative. Gary Britnell explains why

You may have noted in our News section that SynApps is to exhibit at the upcoming Great North Care Record (GNCR) Network Event at the end of the month.

If you’re not familiar with the GNCR, then I’d like to briefly bring you up to speed, then explain why SynApps is an enthusiastic backer of the initiative.

The Great North Care Record project is a serious attempt by the NHS to use technology to improve the way patient information is shared at a local level. Its two key values: everything has to happen with patient consent, and all work is bent towards finding real, practical ways to improve patient care and to help the NHS to run more efficiently.

You may have heard those values espoused before. We’ve all observed ambitious national data sharing programmes come and go. However GNCR, by starting at a local, pragmatic level, has achieved a lot more than some of its better-publicised forebears.

For example, all of phase one of the project’s rollout is complete. In practical terms, that means over 11,000 views of GP records in participating institutions in secondary care are carried out digitally per month.

All eyes are now on phase two, which is focused on exploring how all the health and care settings involved in patient care can have the ability to instantly access and share real-time patient information.

So it seems the emphasis is consistently on delivery. Next week at Newcastle Racecourse, attendees from clinicians working across a range of healthcare settings, social care practitioners and research colleagues are coming together under one roof to share ideas about how the Great North Care Record can improve patient care. We’re looking forward to presentations from senior healthcare policymakers and experts, as well as NHS Trust chief executives from across the North East.

The bottom line is that we have a digital patient-sharing programme that is making progress in the NHS, and that’s something we all need to applaud. And learn from and share best practice out of.

See you in Newcastle?

That’s why SynApps, a veteran of data sharing in the NHS and a trusted supplier of clinical content support to multiple NHS Trusts will be at the Great North Care Record (GNCR) Network Event (November 28).

If you want to come along and meet SynApps, please get in touch at info@10.128.0.8. **Also, don’t miss your chance to win two Amazon Echos, kindly provided by key technology partner Alfresco.**

By the same token, if you are a UK healthcare professional don’t forget to get your free place here.

Gary is SynApps Solutions’ Head of Healthcare

Synapps To Exhibit At Key Networking Event For Clinicians On The GNCR Topic

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We will shortly be exhibiting at the The Great North Care Record (GNCR) network launch event late this month.

The event for health care clinicians, scheduled for Newcastle Racecourse, NE2 5PH on Tuesday, November 28, 9am-1pm, aims to bring together clinicians (working across a range of healthcare settings), social care practitioners and research colleagues to share ideas about how the Great North Care Record can improve patient care, and which SynApps is delighted to be a part of.

Come along to our stand to find out more about how SynApps Health Practice can assist you in managing data.

The Great North Care Record project is all about improving the way patient information is shared, with patient consent, as a way to improve care and helping the NHS to run more efficiently.

To secure your free place at the Newcastle GNCR event, please click here

SynApps Solutions To Exhibit At The Great North Care Record (GNCR) Network Event


Content management leader SynApps Solutions to exhibit at key networking event for clinicians on the GNCR topic

Hatfield, UK, 17 November 2017 – Content management leader SynApps Solutions is delighted to announce it will be exhibiting at the The Great North Care Record (GNCR) network launch event late this month.

The event for health care clinicians, scheduled for Newcastle Racecourse, NE2 5PH on Tuesday, November 28, 9am-1pm, will provide a useful opportunity to see how technology-supported information sharing has enabled change and improved patient care across the North East and North Cumbria.

SynApps has been invited thanks to its strong track record in the UK healthcare market, helping clinicians through content management system solutions to help with their data. SynApps healthcare customers include Croydon Health Services NHS Trust, London’s Kingston Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust and Northampton General Hospital, amongst others.

Why GNCR Matters

The Great North Care Record project is all about improving the way patient information is shared, with patient consent, as a way to improve care and helping the NHS to run more efficiently.

Phase one of GNCR rollout is complete, with 11,000 views of GP records in secondary care each month, while phase two will mean all health and care settings involved in a patient’s care will have the ability to instantly access and share real-time patient information.

GNCR is the focus for this special networking event, which aims to bring together clinicians (working across a range of healthcare settings), social care practitioners and research colleagues to share ideas about how the Great North Care Record can improve patient care, and which SynApps is delighted to be a part of.

Confirmed speakers for the event include senior healthcare policymakers and experts, as well as NHS Trust chief executives from across the North east region.

A Forum For Detailed Discussion

“We look forward to understanding more about what lessons can be shared by other practitioners in both the NHS and social care, as well as to opening up conversations about how best to use technology to achieve those information sharing goals,” said SynApps Solutions’ Head of Healthcare, Gary Britnell.

Please join us at our stand to find out more about how SynApps Health Practice can assist you in managing data.

To secure your free place at the Newcastle GNCR event, please click here

Stabilising NHS IT: How ECM Could Play A Vital Role

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Ultimately we have to re-stabilise NHS IT following the WannaCry malware attack  and ensure it’s totally bulletproof from now on.

That’s the practical message from SynApps Solutions’s Head of Healthcare, Gary Britnell, who’s taken a sobering look at the situation the NHS is left in after this month’s malware attack that left many Trusts and GP surgeries offline.

This is a problem that needs the joint, smart thinking and collaboration of the NHS, the Department of Health and the supplier base, he says.

The key to that stabilising process has to be modernisation. It’s definitely time to upgrade hospital architecture, he argues, while better adherence to standards and great software design will help.

A key player here could be ECM-powered NHS content platforms, he says, as ECM version control, encryption at rest to stop unauthorised access will promote better security and reliability of healthcare systems across the board.

Finally, ECM content is stored in the server and separated from the desktop, which always helps guard against intrusion like WannaCry.

Find out in more detail here how ECM can help prevent future NHS ransomware crises

Post WannaCry, It’s Time To Think Of A Better Future



As the worst of the NHS Ransomware crisis fades, it’s time to try and take stock of what happened.

Firstly, SynApps Solutions is very concerned, and is here to help any NHS Trust or other healthcare organisation still struggling to beat off the WannaCry malware infection. As a proud supplier of information technology solutions to the national health Service, we were appalled by this vicious cyber attack, and our team is here to offer any advice needed over and above that provided by NHS Digital and NHS England to get you back up and safe.

However once the immediate aftermath is over, we have to think, as an IT community, about what to do to ensure it can’t ever disrupt our hospitals and GP surgeries again.

The key to that has to be modernisation. It’s definitely time to upgrade hospital architecture, and this is a problem that needs the joint, smart thinking and collaboration of the NHS, the Department of Health, the supplier base – and ultimately, the government.

All these stakeholders need to pull together to rebuild patient and citizen trust in our resilience and stability. There will be a financial aspect to this, ultimately. The XP holdover happened because both the government and many CCIOs just didn’t want to spend money. It’s tempting to stick to such platforms, as you will want to sweat the asset and extract as much value from it as you can over time – and, as we all know, the NHS has huge budgetary pressures these days.

But as the crisis has shown, it’s a false economy to keep putting off replacement of IT. It’s effectively leaving a back window open in your system stack that a malicious ill-wind like WannaCry can blow into. So, let’s address that.

Standards and great software design will help

We need to fix this because we’re just not going to get any real traction to what we all want, which is a digital-empowered NHS.

The good news is that no SynApps VNA or Integrated Digital Care Record clients were affected this month. That’s because content (be it DICOM image files or patient records) stored in ECM (Enterprise Content Management) platforms are protected against attack in multiple ways. For a start, content is stored in the server and separated from the desktop; so unlike with a mounted network drive, attack at the desktop level, in the style of WannaCry ransomware, would only affect temporary, local, copies and not have an impact of the master files stored in the server.

Even better, ECM version control always allows the roll back of any corrupted file to a proper version, so should an end user mistakenly upload a corrupted file the system can revert, safely, to where it should be. And finally, encryption at rest will stop any unauthorised access to the content

Another advantage of ECM-powered NHS suites will be their sound design. Written to the latest software engineering best practice metrics, and in our case firmly adhering to important international standards like CDA, it’s just a much safer bet to put your faith into something like this than an archaic, obsolete platform.

Perhaps it’s a bit too soon for some of you to be thinking like this, but ultimately we have to re-stabilise NHS IT and ensure it’s bulletproof from now on.

Look to ECM as one way to do just that. It can really help.

Gary Britnell
Head of SynApps Healthcare Practice

SynApps Gains Coverage In Tier One Tech Title Computer Business Review

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Head of our Healthcare Practice Gary Britnell was asked by this important UK IT sector publication to outline the best response by the UK health IT community to Secretary of Health Jeremy Hunt’s recent apparent dismissal of the importance of NHS paperless targets.

From 2013 on, the Health Secretary and his Department stressed the imperative to get the NHS fully paperless by 2018. But earlier this month, what many in the sector took to be a dismissal of the whole campaign by the Secretary came to light, who told the NHS Sustainability cross-party committee of MPs he was “quite relieved most people seem to have forgotten” the whole idea.

For Gary, NHS IT leaders should instead look at the great progress to paperless made so far, and indeed mull over the idea that 2018 might well remain a realistic target for some ambitious Trusts when it comes to going digital. He also discusses how getting to the NHS we need is not going to be easy, but practical techniques like the integrated digital care record (IDCR) are emerging as a great way to get there.

The good news is that once we have this in place, says SynApps, we will be able to do great things in the NHS, such as route information without any need for re-keying or asking the patient the same questions, allow collation of data for better analysis of the bigger trends, programmatic search, and so on – as well as head off patient data loss that can put lives at risk.

Read Gary’s ideas in full here