Wales is now the first nation in the UK to enable digitised patient information to be accessed by healthcare professionals across all health board organisational boundaries, allowing information to follow the patient wherever in Wales care is provided.
In January, the millionth digital test result was viewed between health boards via Wales' digital patient record service, the Welsh Clinical Portal. January was also the busiest month to date for viewing out-of-area patient information, with more than 49,000 test results shared between health boards.
This milestone comes a month after Cardiff and Vale became the final health board in Wales to adopt the digital radiology results reporting service, available through the Welsh Clinical Portal.
The move means that clinicians in all Welsh hospitals can now view both radiology and pathology test results from across Wales in one place.
Having access to results produced in neighbouring health boards saves time, informs clinical decisions and means fewer duplicate tests and scans are needed for patients.
"Reaching the milestone of one million test results viewed across Welsh health board boundaries demonstrates the scale of value that can be generated when a national product is fully implemented," said Griff Williams, Project Lead for the Welsh Clinical Portal. "Our plan for the Single Patient Record is to further increase the level of digitised healthcare available to NHS healthcare professionals, including endoscopy, lung function and genetics results."
The Welsh Clinical Portal is a national IT system created and built by NHS Wales. It shares, delivers and displays patient information from a number of sources with a single log-on, which helps to improve collaboration between clinicians, hospitals and other health centres in Wales.
27/02/2020