Health and care organisations across Greater Manchester (GM) have accelerated the deployment of the GM Care Record for all 2.8 million citizens to provide frontline professionals with vital information in the fight against COVID-19.

Allowing health and social care staff to access critical patient information, it is currently being used to access over 70,000 records a month, with over 9,000 users, connecting around 500 organisations, including primary and secondary care, mental health and community trusts, out of hours services, specialist trusts, social care and the region’s ambulance service.

It is an extension of integrated care records already live in each locality of Greater Manchester. However, it collates patient information from across Greater Manchester into one place, making it easily accessible for health and care workers to inform direct care from across geographies and organisations.

In response to the pandemic, the GM Care Record also includes information about when a patient has been diagnosed with COVID-19 and whether they are self-isolating at home or have been hospitalised. This ensures continuity of care across different care settings and alternatives such as digital support can be put in place.

The project has been overseen by Health Innovation Manchester and the GM Health and Social Care Partnership, working on behalf of GM’s devolved health and care partners, and tech provider of shared care records and techUK member Graphnet. Rapid progress has been made in weeks rather than months as part of the city region’s digital response plan and collaborative effort.

The GM Care Record is not just about care and treatment – it also provides the mechanism by which citizens’ deidentified health and care data related to COVID-19 can be used for research and secondary use purposes.

Greater Manchester has been disproportionately affected by COVID-19. Likewise, there are communities within GM that have been disproportionately affected. Working with the University of Manchester, the hope is that the use of deidentified patient data for research will help them understand this, as well as how they can improve GM’s health and care response to the pandemic.

Join us for an event bringing together different perspectives from clinical, academia, industry and the GM health and care system to showcase the work that has gone into creating the Care Record and the benefits this will bring to the care and treatment of citizens.

You will hear from:

Charlotte Lewis: Senior Associate, Commercial Health, Mills & Reeve (Chair)

Guy Lucchi: Digital Innovation Director, Health Innovation Manchester and the Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership

Dr Paula Bennett: Associate Director, Clinical Development, Health Innovation Manchester

Hadleigh Stollar: Customer Director, Graphnet Health

Professor John Ainsworth: Professor of Health Informatics, University of Manchester

Their presentations will be followed by a Q&A with the audience.

Joining instructions will be sent the day before the event. If you encounter any issues while trying to register, please contact Health and Social Care programme manager Leontina Postelnicu: leontina.postelnicu@techuk.org