The Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust says it has boosted efficiency via early use of a new portal that brings patient data from multiple sources into one place.

"Just being able to view all critical information about a patient on one screen is a revelation," said Patrick Chu, consultant haematologist at the Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust. "The use of portals is clearly the way forward to help increase efficiency, improve treatment and diagnosis and patient safety."

The trialled system - the Clinical Information Portal from supplier CSC, implemented with technology from Carefx - has been shown to save around 30 minutes average clinician time during its 60 day evaluation.

The portal is letting healthcare professionals get a single screen view of a patient's notes, collated from information currently held in disparate clinical and administration systems across the trust, such as the trust's PAS (patient administration system) and PACS (picture archiving and communications system).

It has also allowed consultants, their registrars and specialist nurses to consult with patients by viewing patient medical history, key treatments, referrals, diagnosis and test results electronically rather than by paper case notes.

The system also shows promise for reducing admin load on nursing and back office staff, who may end up spending much less time moving case notes around and searching for and preparing case notes.

The pilot is also significant as it forms part of the early evaluation stages of the NHS Interoperability Toolkit, a Connecting For Health initiative to connect disparate systems and data sources instead of replacing them.

The portal was tested in the hospital's haematology and dermatology departments which then extended to include cardiology and renal.

The trial was to see if Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen could eventually find a technology-based replacement for paper case notes - which feedback suggests is now highly achievable.

"We are aiming to begin full roll-out of a portal system at the beginning of 2011," added James Norman, Director of IM&T at the Trust. "We are excited about the efficiencies and opportunities that a portal can bring to the trust through the elimination of case notes and improved access to the right information at the right time for clinicians."

Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospital Trust is one of the largest in the North of England, with an annual budget of over £400 million, more than 5,500 staff and almost one million patients being seen every year.

Source: http://www.publictechnology.net/sector/nhs-health/new-portal-csc-gets-green-light-royal-liverpool