Gareth Thomas, Director of Digital Innovation at Health Innovation Manchester and NHS Greater Manchester

At Health Innovation Manchester and NHS Greater Manchester, one of our missions is to improve patient care by enhancing digital services for healthcare professionals and patients. Over the coming weeks, we’ll be celebrating our recent successes with the GM Care Record, Secure Data Environment, Digital First Primary Care and the Social Care Digitisation Programme, highlighting the progress being made towards transforming healthcare across Greater Manchester.

Three award wins in two months

We are thrilled to have received industry recognition for GM Care Record programmes, showing the value of partnership to achieve success.

• HSJ Patient Safety – improving medicines safety

Partners: NHS GM, NIHR Greater Manchester Patient Safety Research Collaboration

Project: Embedding a Safety Medication dASHboard (SMASH) within the GM Care Record to benefit the 2.8 million population of Greater Manchester.

SMASH was embedded in GM Care Record following a successful trial in Salford which saw patients at risk of harm from hazardous prescribing drop by 40% in 12 months. 65% of prescribers agreed that patients are less at risk of unnecessary hospital admissions from unsafe prescribing using the new SMASH dashboard. As well as patent safety and ease of use, having SMASH embedded in cloud-based GMCR means practices are saving roughly £7k a year on on-premises servers.

Read more here: Greater Manchester collaborative bring home a prestigious HSJ Patient Safety award!

• HTN – best use of digital for integrated care systems

Partners: Pumping Marvellous, Dementia United, Graphnet

Thousands of individuals now receive more personalised, better-informed care thanks to digital care plans and My GM Care patient app, integrated within the GM Care Record.

• HTN – best use of digital for social care

Partners: Bury Integrated Delivery Collaborative, Safe Steps

The successful deployment of a digital deterioration tracker alongside a multifactorial falls prevention tool helped support a 20% reduction in ambulance call outs (NWAS care home falls data 22-24) in 37 Bury care homes.

Read more here: Health Innovation Manchester celebrates double win at HTN Health Tech Awards 2024

Integrated Care Planning: End of Life, Heart Failure and Dementia

Integrated care plans provide a consistent source of information across different parts of the healthcare system and can allow patients to contribute data to their own records.

Our integrated care planning initiatives are reaching important milestones as part of a process of on-going evaluation to understand the benefits they can offer:

End of life: The Electronic Palliative Care Coordination System (EPaCCS) gives health and care professionals access to comprehensive end of life information, including patient wishes. Nearly 7,000 care plans have been created, enabling better care coordination for patients in need of palliative services.

EPaCCS will be our main focus in 2025 – building awareness and adoption across Greater Manchester to ensure the benefits are understood by everyone involved in advanced care planning and end of life care.

Heart Failure: Over 3,000 care plans have been created during a pilot evaluation in Tameside and Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale, aiming to deliver better-coordinated care and improved outcomes for patients.

Dementia: We’ve reached our target, with over 1,000 plans created for the pilot evaluation in Tameside and Bury, helping us understand how to deliver optimal care for those living with dementia.

Read more about care planning here: Care Planning on the GM Care Record – Resources for Clinicians

My GM Care: Expanding patient involvement in their own care

The My GM Care app, a personal health record (PHR) solution, is undergoing a phased evaluation across Tameside and has already proven popular averaging over 1ins per day since launch. , demonstrating the public’s growing interest in accessing and contributing to their health information digitally. We’re excited to share that other localities are also expressing interest in launching My GM Care.

Read more about the My GM Care app here: My GM Care – Resources for Clinicians

Community Pharmacy access to the GM Care Record

We’ve completed the development of Community Pharmacy Single Sign-On (SSO) access via PharmOutcomes, and onboarding and IG documentation is currently in progress. Nearly 100 pharmacies are now live with GM Care Record, plus Well Pharmacy has become the first pharmacy chain to request GM Care Record access to their 60+ locations – enhancing patient care and medication safety in Greater Manchester.

Find out more about Community Pharmacy access to the GM Care Record here: Community Pharmacy Access to the GM Care Record – Resources for Pharmacists

Training and Clinical Engagement

Nearly 400 staff members voluntarily signed up for EPaCCS Version 4 training, reflecting the commitment of our healthcare teams to enhance their skills and capabilities.

Additionally, we have kick-started a programme focused on clinical engagement, with engagement sessions planned  with key stakeholders soon — demonstrating a  commitment to  incorporating the  clinical voices in the  transformation journey.

Find out more about GM Care Record training here: Training – GM Care Record (gmwearebettertogether.com)

If you’d like to invite our senior clinical team to your meeting, forum or network to outline the functionality of the GMCR, please get in touch by emailing communications@healthinnovationmancehster.com.

GM Care Record Usage: record-breaking numbers

Over the last three months, patient record access has been growing steadily:

August: 301,408 records accessed by 23,254 unique users

September: 305,958 records accessed by 22,564 unique users

October: 307,562 records accessed by 23,273 unique users

The GM care Record exceeded 300,000 patient records accessed in July this year. This milestone represents a 20% year on year growth and illustrates the increasing reliance on the GM Care Record to support decision-making across the healthcare system.

We are immensely proud of these achievements, which reflect our ongoing commitment to supporting healthcare professionals and improving patient experiences. Thanks to the hard work of our dedicated team and partners, these initiatives will help transform care for the people of Greater Manchester.

Look out for more updates in 2025 as we continue our digital transformation journey.