Child-protection data sharing project goes live in UK

ETON, UK – InterSystems, a global leader in software for connected care, announced that Homerton University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has gone live with the InterSystems HealthShare health informatics platform to support a new national Child Protection-Information Sharing (CP-IS) project.

The solution gives health professionals in unscheduled care settings prompt and secure access to key, non-clinical social care information that can help them assess if a child is at risk.

CP-IS is a major initiative led by NHS England and the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC). Unscheduled care settings include local authority children’s services (social care), hospital emergency departments, minor injury units, walk-in centres in CCGs/primary care, maternity units, GP out of hours, paediatric wards, and ambulance services.

A central, national system holds details about visits to unscheduled care settings of all children who have a child protection plan or are classed as looked-after. Only NHS staff involved with the care of the child will have access to the information, which is non-clinical. It will be accessed via a secure electronic system and robust rules about who has permission to view the information are in place.

National rollout of the CP-IS solution is planned for completion by 2018 and will connect 1,230 NHS settings and 152 local authorities for the protection of vulnerable children in England.

Homerton is the first NHS care provider organization to go live with real-time access to the new national CP-IS solution. Child protection information is transmitted securely from Local Authority IT systems to the central NHS Spine. InterSystems HealthShare is used at Homerton to access the Spine and incorporate CP-IS information into key workflows that notify care providers when they are treating a vulnerable child.

InterSystems HealthShare is a health informatics platform that includes a Spine Mini Services Provider (SMSP) solution used to access the NHS Personal Demographics Service. Following the pilot implementation at Homerton, HealthShare SMSP has now been extended to provide access to CP-IS.

HealthShare SMSP is the first commercially available solution to complete the HSCIC Common Assurance Process (CAP) for access to CP-IS. The Trust staff worked with InterSystems to complete process and information governance obligations that ensure rigorous controls over the access to sensitive personal information and its use within the Trust.

Homerton selected InterSystems HealthShare following a thorough review of options for accessing the CP-IS system. HSCIC offers a web-based viewer that allows clinicians to access the centrally held CP-IS information for an identified patient. However, the Trust wanted a local solution to access CP-IS and incorporate information into the workflows of operational systems on site. The Trust determined it would be too costly and time-consuming to develop and certify integrations between individual IT systems and CP-IS.

Instead, the Trust chose HealthShare SMSP to provide a single, accredited gateway to access CP-IS information. This could be implemented quickly allowing the Trust to introduce the new service without disruption or additional training for clinical staff. When users enter a child’s basic demographic details into local systems, the CP-IS information can be automatically displayed.

Steve Ouko, Systems Integration Manager, Homerton University NHS Foundation Trust, said: “We firmly believe in the importance and value of the CP-IS project to facilitate the protection of young people and are committed to spearheading the national roll-out of the project. InterSystems HealthShare has ensured that our in-house IT team has been able to work closely with the HSCIC to build and implement a solution that gives clinicians the requisite functionality while also keeping us in control of its delivery.”

Steve Garrington (pictured), Vice President, International, InterSystems, said: “InterSystems is delighted that Homerton has chosen HealthShare as the strategic interoperability platform to implement the Child Protection-Information Sharing project. We hope many more organizations will join Homerton in this important national initiative to protect vulnerable children in the UK.”

About Homerton University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

Based in the east London Borough of Hackney, its staff work from 75 different sites to provide hospital and a wide range of adult and children’s community services to Hackney and the City of London. Specialist care services include obstetrics, neonatology, foetal medicine, fertility, neuro-rehabilitation, bariatric surgery, and asthma and allergy treatments for patients throughout east London and beyond. The hospital has over 450 inpatient beds, an emergency department, an intensive care unit, state-of-the-art imaging and x-ray facilities, a modern sexual health treatment centre, diabetes centre and eye screening service. Over 120,000 people attend the emergency department every year, with approximately 6,000 babies born with the help of its maternity services. Homerton was one of the first 10 NHS Foundation Trusts in the NHS.

About InterSystems

InterSystems develops advanced software technologies that enable breakthroughs. With a passion for excellence and a focus on client success, InterSystems provides data management, strategic interoperability, and analytics platforms used in healthcare, financial services, government, and other industries. In selected countries, InterSystems also offers unified healthcare applications, based on its core technologies, that deliver on the promise of connected healthcare. Founded in 1978, InterSystems is a privately held company headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts (USA), with offices worldwide, and its products are used daily by millions of people in more than 100 countries. For more information, visit InterSystems.co.uk.