CCube Solutions has completed a complex project to fully integrate and embed its electronic document and records management (EDRM) software at Milton Keynes University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.
The software, which contains over 80 million scanned legacy patient records, has been integrated into the trust’s exsiting Cerner’s Millennium electronic patient record (EPR) system.
This is the first time this has been done in the UK and gives around 3,800 staff immediate access to digital patient notes contained in the CCube EDRM – but viewed from within Millennium – without them having to log in and out of the two systems inputting their username and password or any medical record numbers.
Clinicians now just press an EDRM tab added within the Millennium menu and a viewer immediately displays the patient’s record from the CCube system.
Easy and quick to then navigate, all the digital notes of an individual are displayed in folders on screen covering appointment letters, correspondence, and the results of clinical trials.
It is the ‘in context’ aspect of this workflow project which is of significance.
Craig York, the trust’s chief technology officer, explains: “We don’t require clinicians to open up a new Internet Explorer window to do this, which is another way the integration could have been done.
“But they’d then have multiple screens open and it could become distracting and confusing for staff about which patient file they’re actually in, which we obviously didn’t want.
“Another good feature is that when a clinician then selects a new patient, the system automatically refreshes and shows the new person’s historical notes when the EDRM tab is pressed in Millennium.”
And the integration of the two system saves valuable time for busy clinicians.
This is key as the number of patients treated at Milton Keynes University Hospital is substantial.
In 2020/2021, there were 313,363 outpatient attendances, 22,208 non-elective admissions, and 73,397 emergency department attendances.
Debbie Phillips, the hospital’s chief clinical information officer and consultant surgeon, said: “The importance of opportunities to save clinical time within a digital system can’t be underestimated given the number of patients we have to treat.”
Vijay Magon, CCube Solutions’ managing director, added: “We are particularly pleased with The trust’s move to digital cloud and adoption of our hosted EDRM. It’s definitely a way forward in the NHS given the maturity and security of cloud offerings.”