PatientSource expands into sexual health and mental health sectors

PatientSource has announced it has signed a contract with north London-based charity, The Brandon Centre, to digitise delivery of its sexual health, mental health, healthy living and parenting services.

The contract marks the EPR vendor’s move into to the sexual health and mental health sectors, building on its existing client-base within acute hospitals in the NHS and whole healthcare system deployments for international clients.

The Brandon Centre provides free specialist contraceptive, sexual health, counselling and psychotherapy services to young people under 25-year-olds living in north London.

The centre continues to be the leader in intensive community-based systemic treatment for families of 8-16 year olds displaying moderate to severe behavioural difficulties, including teens who are beyond parental control and in trouble with the law.

We have come to realise that we need to invest in our clinical IT infrastructure now so as not to hold our services back and ensure that we can offer the experience that the young people we serve deserve

In addition, it provides a range of innovative education and training programmes and special outreach projects for young people, parents, schools and colleges across London.

PatientSource is helping the centre move from dated paper-based processes to a fully-digitised service.

Julia Brown, chief executive of The Brandon Centre, said: “As with many charities, we have limited resources and so we have to make very-careful decisions regarding any capital investments.

“Investment in our clinical services always takes priority and we have come to realise that we need to invest in our clinical IT infrastructure now so as not to hold our services back and ensure that we can offer the experience that the young people we serve deserve.”

As part of its new three-year business strategy, the centre is investing in new IT servers and moving to cloud-based services as well as digitising its paper records and sexual health drop-in service using PatientSource’s bespoke services.

Brown said: “One of the main reasons we chose PatientSource was that they could tailor their systems to meet our needs. We are not just buying an ‘off the shelf’ product and trying to make it fit across our broad range of services.”

Sam Weston, lead administrator, added: “We have a lot of paper admin at the moment. There are filing cabinets full of records across two of our sites, plus warehouses full of archived records.

We are not just buying an ‘off the shelf’ product and trying to make it fit across our broad range of services

“We spend a lot of time entering the same information into databases and we also use a paper diary for appointments, which means we often have to ring people back if someone else is using the diary, which isn’t great in terms of the service we are offering. We are hoping that the new PatientSource systems will change all of this.”

PatientSource will deliver a phased deployment, starting with the digitisation of the drop-in appointments for its sexual health clinic before digitising all records.

Michael Brooks, medical director at PatientSource, said: “We can already see the potential benefits that PatientSource can bring to The Brandon Centre in improving its work processes, making staff more efficient, and freeing up valuable time for them to support the young people that need their help.”