Alex Health: our new electronic health record (EHR)

Our new electronic health record (EHR) is coming. It is one of the biggest transformation programmes PAHT has ever seen, and we’re calling it Alex Health

Alex Health is core to the delivery of our digital strategy and the strategic priorities in PAHT2030, including improving quality, patient safety and care, and the experience of our people.

An EHR is an integrated digital record of a patient’s care, drawing together information from all systems that store that patient’s data. It helps to facilitate easy access to this clinical data, which includes the Shared Care Record. It will also replace current patient administration systems such as Cosmic, NerveCentre and many more.

Alex Health will transform our ability to track and store patient data, simplifying health care delivery and administration across the Trust. It will improve patient safety and health outcomes by giving clinicians easy access to a patient’s full medical history and enhance health information sharing amongst integrated care partners such as GPs and social services.

Almost every member of staff will benefit from Alex Health in some way, as it will significantly reduce the administrative burden of managing the different, incompatible systems we have now.

Benefits for our people include: y a single source of accurate patient data for quicker access, better coordination of services and improved reporting y improved communication between services and reliability of referrals y clinicians will be able to check previous referrals and appointments y enhanced transfer of care between services y ability to access up-to-date information in circumstances where intervention is necessary to save or protect life or prevent a patient from serious/immediate harm y time saved on the ‘paperwork’ that can be redirected to patient care y one single sign on for Alex Health, accessing all connected systems behind it

Benefits for our patients include: y improved safety of care y reduced repeat testing with the availability of results across care settings y avoiding repeating the same information to different clinicians y increased clinician awareness of key patient information e.g. allergies and additional needs y reduced hospital attendances and admissions as clinicians will have awareness of pre-existing conditions and treatment plans y improved access to appointment booking including rescheduling y better support to help patients manage their own care

Alex Health will take around 18 months to develop, test and implement.

There will be comprehensive training for everyone who will use it before we go live in autumn 2024.

Introducing Alex Health

We officially launched the Alex Health programme on 18 July

The launch day was an opportunity for people to find out more about Alex Health and its benefits for our patients and our people, with colleagues out and about around our hospital sites to share the news, with cupcakes and freebies.

We held a special This is Us briefing in the Alex Lounge on 18 July to celebrate, which was also live streamed on Microsoft Teams. You can watch the recording here >

What's next?

We have just started our Current State Review (CSR) workshops - there will be over 100 of them - where we will talk to staff in different clinical and operational areas across the Trust to look at our current strengths and determine where the main challenges lie in successfully implementing Alex Health

Following these workshops, we will work with Oracle Health to develop plans to overcome the challenges so every area is fully ready for Alex Health by go live.

To find out what CSR workshops are running, please visit AlexNet >

If you have been invited to a CSR workshop, please make sure you attend - your input is vital.