Have you seen the article about Hytec's information sharing proof-of-concept in January's "Health & Care Management," the official journal of the Institute of Healthcare Management?

Pages 13-14 carry a feature entitled "Polyclinics get in gear" about the work we carried out at Redbridge Polyclinic.

Running polyclinics or developing polysystems highlights one of the fundamental problems facing PCTs: how to share information.

Redbridge Polyclinic is home to over 20 services, and practitioners, clinicians and nurses working in the polyclinic need to have access to these different systems to obtain information about their patients.

Redbridge Polyclinic undertook an innovative proof-of-concept demonstration to integrate various IT systems. Using our integration framework, Integral Xchange™, we were able to demonstrate a solution that pulled together information from three disparate systems - EMIS, Tynedale and CareFirst - allowing records to be consolidated, viewed or updated at the point of clinical service delivery. This was achieved within the context of providing better-coordinated care for patients, while maintaining the privacy, accuracy and security of information in each system.

Our solution enables healthcare professionals to have:

• Real-time information from multiple sources
• A 360 degree view of a patient’s care
• The ability to book appointments directly without having to access any specific system
• Consolidate, report and analyse information from multiple systems
• Promote and foster information exchange
• Plan and better allocate resources, improve the clinic’s efficiency
• Produce better health and wellbeing outcomes for patients

In reviewing the outcomes of the project Conor Burke, Borough Managing Director, NHS Redbridge said: "Greater use of IT systems to manage, track and, in some cases, pre-empt medical conditions are a key element of our vision to offer more effective care closer to home. It is a case of working smarter and making better use of the data we already have. This offers a clear integrated system that supports our goal of helping create ‘seamless’ healthcare where patients are treated quickly and effectively."