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Monday, March 5, 2012

If Ever There Was An Argument That Simple Is Good In Health Information Sharing This Is It. It Is Cheap and Seems To Work!

This appeared a week or so back.

Wales makes good progress with IHR

24 February 2012   Rebecca Todd
More than 300 GP practices have switched on access to the Individual Health Record in Wales, making about 2m summary patient records available to emergency care providers.
Approximately 3m people live in Wales. But the IHR is now available in every health board area, following the go-live of the Abertawe Bro Morgannwg University Health Board at the start of the year.
The IHR is the Welsh version of the Summary Care Record in England. It allows secure access to a summary GP record for doctors and nurses working in an out-of-hours services or medical assessment units.
The record is only available to other clinicians working within the local health board of the patient’s GP and with the patient’s consent.
The record includes basic demographic information, medications and allergies.
Clinicians can also see any medical problems that the patient has seen their GP about over the previous two years and the results of any tests or x-rays from the previous year.
The £4.7m service was funded by the Welsh Assembly Government and developed by the NHS Wales Informatics Service in partnership with clinical systems suppliers.
More here:
Here is the link to the home page:
The latest release is interesting in terms of the contents of the IHR.

Individual Health Record availability increases further

About two million GP patient records can now be viewed by out of hours medical staff.
Patient's from 305 practices now have an Individual Health Record (IHR), which is a summary of the GP record, that out of hours Doctors, in their area, can see while treating them.
The IHR contains only information that would be helpful in treating patients and does not contain sensitive details.
It will have:
  • Your name, address and contact details
  • Details of your current GP practice
  • What medication you’re taking or have been taking
  • Medical problems you’ve seen your GP about
  • Recorded allergies
  • Results of any recent tests you may have had, for example, blood tests and x-rays
  • Only the last two years of medication history and one year of test results will be shown.
It will not include details on: 
  • Sexually transmitted diseases
  • HIV / AIDS
  • Human fertility and embryology
  • Terminations
  • Gender reassignment
  • Any private discussions you have had with your GP
Find out more at www.wales.nhs.uk/individualhealthrecord including the option for patient's to opt out.
The release is here:
The key features of a basic data set, opt-out and access only for clinicians who need the information makes this - to me - a much smarter route than the nonsense we are undertaking with the PCEHR.
The cost also is so small as to be a rounding error in the health budget - even if multiplied by 10!
Even better this record might make a real difference quite quickly!
Go Wales!
David.