One South West, a consortium of 55 organisations that came together to bid for Local Health and Care Record Exemplar (LHCRE) funding, is a great example of collaboration and shared vision. Every NHS Chief Information Officer and Chief Clinical Information Officer across the West and South West of England got behind the bid, to accelerate shared records development and adoption of tools such as population health management.
Despite not winning funding from NHS England, the members of One South West are determined to maintain the momentum created by coming together to share their innovations and create a shared vision for the region.
Deborah El-Sayed, Senior Responsible Officer (SRO) for One South West commented: “We appreciate it will have been a challenging process for the panel with only two final slots available, and that someone has to come third or fourth. For us, the process has been positive, with tangible outcomes that we hope to build upon.
“In the West Country we are resilient to temporary setbacks of this nature. We will have to assess other funding possibilities and consider our capacity to continue unfunded, but we are determined to capitalise on the work that has been put into this bid.”
Natasha Swinscoe, Managing Director of West of England AHSN said: “The power of collaboration exemplified in this bid is an example of the ability of the Academic Health Science Network to bring key players together to work to improve our health service.
“Working with our colleagues in the South West AHSN we have engaged Clinicians and Information Officers from Penzance to Gloucester to bring together the innovative and farsighted work that is going on. We are determined this work will continue and we will collaborate with our colleagues in the Dorset, Hampshire and Thames Valley to ensure the needs of our patients and their pathways are met.”
The process of putting together the bid pulled together initiatives across six Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships (STPs) in the region, serving a population of nearly five million people. The existing work on shared records that was brought together under the One South West bid included:
- Connecting Care in Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire
- Joining Up Your Information in Gloucestershire
- Interoperability Programme in Bath and North East Somerset
- Swindon SUCCESS programme
- Single View in Wiltshire
- SIDeR in Somerset
- Devon and Cornwall are working on linking their shared care record ambitions and are acting as fast followers
As Chris Bown, the SRO for Bath & North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire STP says: “It’s disappointing not to win the funding but let’s keep the momentum going, I’m looking forward to enabling this in the future.”
Posted on June 29, 2018
