Greater Manchester has appointed a suite of suppliers to commence development of a next generation digital platform that will support the transformation of public services and empower people to take control over their own health, wellbeing and support.

The Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership (GMHSCP) and the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) are working together to invest £7.5m in new technologies that support better ways of working and join up data from the many systems across public services.

The city region is now moving forward with plans to develop a suite of products that will make it easier, safer and quicker for professionals and  citizens to access the right information, when and where they need it.  The technology will first be developed and first used in the areas of dementia, frailty and health visiting. Better sharing of information between professionals will radically improve support for our citizens.

The process is being overseen jointly by the GMCA and Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust, part of the Northern Care Alliance, on behalf of the GMHSCP.  The technology solutions form part of Greater Manchester’s response to the national Local Health and Care Record (LHCR) programme.

Following a competitive procurement process, the following suppliers have now been selected to deliver various technology components:

• Civica has been appointed to develop an Enterprise Master Patient Index, which ensures information shared between systems is safely attached to the correct person’s records.
• Philips Forcare has been selected to develop a Record Locator Service, which allows different systems to find and retrieve records relevant to an individual in different care settings.
• Objectivity Ltd has been appointed to develop a citizen app, based on the Mendix low-code platform.
• ANS are providing cloud consultancy and services to the programme to enable us to achieve a ‘Cloud First’ approach to deployment. This will help us to deliver a cost effective, stable and secure platform hosting all the software providers’ services from deployment stage through to production.

These solutions are in addition to the local shared care records in place across the city region. Graphnet’s Care Centric system already supports the sharing of over 4,000 patient records every day to inform better care.

Consultancy, Accenture, has also been appointed to provide additional programme assurance and to support the design, configuration and testing of the technology solutions.

Cllr Elise Wilson, Portfolio Lead for Digital City Region at the GMCA, said: “This is a game changing initiative for the people of Greater Manchester and the digital capabilities we are creating have the potential to be re-used to improve many other public services too. It shows what a joint effort can achieve when public services come together with a strong focus on the people they support.”

Stephen Dobson, Chief Digital Officer at the GM Health and Social Care Partnership, said: “Our digital programme is driving a new way of thinking about how we connect systems across GM and work together with suppliers to build on our collective strengths.  It will increase our ability to involve people in what happens with personal data, enhance the use information for direct care and increase the rate at which we can adopt new technologies.”

Raj Jain, Chief Executive of the Northern Care Alliance NHS Group, commented: “We’re really pleased to be involved in this important and trail blazing programme of work. Our role is the design, development and testing of new and innovative technology. In the short-term our work will be focussed on frailty and dementia where we will explore the opportunities to enable patients and citizens to access specific elements of their care record and contribute to it, where appropriate. We look forward to working with colleagues across Tameside, Stockport and Trafford next year to rapidly test new platforms to allow this.”