The Hospital plans to employ a private Cloud version of the ‘E-Health Cloud’, but a demonstrator version will also go live on Scottish provider’s Extility public Cloud platform next month and is being billed as the first large-scale deployment of such an offering in an e-health context.
Researchers at Chelsea and Westminster are working in conjunction with Edinburgh Napier University to establish whether the system could realistically be used to replace current paper-based systems.
At a time when the NHS National Programme for IT's efforts to implement electronic patient records has run aground and been fiercely criticised by the Public Accounts Commitee and the National Audit Office, the project will doubtless be watched with keen interest. Prime Minister David Cameron suggested before the last General Election that putting patient records into Clouds delivered by the likes of Microsoft or Google was a viable way forward.
Tony Lucas, Flexiant’s founder said: “Hosting the data in the Cloud as soon as results are published means that the patient can go online and access them, sharing them in real-time with everyone who needs to see them. They will be able to invite their GP, consultants, health carers and family members – people they trust and who need to know the results.”
This situation had “massive implications” for the future of treatment in the UK because it meant that patients had control over their treatment and their records for the first time, he added.
The E-Health Cloud will create a unique ‘patient simulator’ for each record which, depending on the individual’s condition, will include different clinical parameters such as body temperature and blood pressure together with a risk assessment or early warning score in order to help identify any problems early. Access to patient records will be protected by means of a multi-factor authentication process that builds on and integrates with existing NHS security systems.
A Chelsea and Westminster spokesman said: “Our Foundation trust is at the forefront for providing technological innovations in the hospital clinical environment, to improve patient care. Implementation of the Cloud infrastructure at the hospital will be one of many enhancements made to patient care by Professor Derek Bell through his role as the director of NWL CLARHC which has an ethos of closing the second translational gap and bringing research into practice.”
The two year project is being funded by the Technology Strategy Board and by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Cath Everett
Quelle/Source: BusinessCloud9, 20.06.2011
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