Systems integration and data sharing
The drive to break down barriers and put the citizen at the centre of a choice-based model of public services remains at the heart of the government's modernisation agenda.
Taking the complexity out of information sharing remains the number one challenge facing the public sector.
The pace of change is accelerating towards an integrated, joined up model that will fundamentally alter the public service landscape in the coming years. At the core of this policy is the development of a citizen-centric approach that focuses on enabling choice and assessing needs that can then be met through a more diverse service model.
To ensure users (whether care workers, housing officers, environmental inspectors, managers and administrators) have a single view of the most important information they need, our solution architects have created component based architecture that delivers proven solutions for information sharing and multi-agency working.
Sharing data to enable multi-agency working
Hytec's Integral Xchange™ is a generic integration framework that uses open systems standards for linking and sharing information across any computer system.
Integral Xchange™ allows any number of system databases to be linked, for data items selected by the authority to be extracted in real-time and for view or update screens of those data items to be created dynamically for real time point of use. Security and access to each screen can be tightly controlled. Our methodology is to preserve the integrity of the individual databases and their associated applications whilst delivering to the user all the benefits of integration. Mirroring at data level the very concept of multi-agency co-operation.
Sharing data in the care sector
The social care and health sectors are at the forefront of multi-agency working and information sharing. Driven by key initiatives such as Single Assessment for Older People (SAP), Common Assessment Framework (CAF), the Electronic Social Care Record (ESCR), the NHS's Connecting For Health programme together with the move to Children's Trusts, the Integrated Children's System and the Information Sharing (IRT/ISA/ContactPoint), information sharing is now firmly at the centre of IT development in social care.
Information sharing at the point of service delivery
Hytec's Integral Xchange™ product framework (Integral Xview™, Integral Xhub™ and Integral Xindex™) can work with any computer system and can interface with applications developed using our Integral mForms® toolset for rapid mobile applications development.
This approach has allowed us to shape a strategy for business transformation that provides data sharing at the point of service delivery. GPs, care workers, health visitors, housing inspectors or emergency services professionals may now access 'consolidated records' - complete records that comprise individual data items extracted from different computer systems - via desktop, laptop or tablet PCs, handheld PDAs or BlackBerry devices.