The Greater Manchester Care Record: One year on – realising the benefits for direct care and population health management.

Clinical and system leaders from across Greater Manchester shared their experiences during a webinar session on Thursday 10th September, on how rapidly deploying a city region wide digital care record to the region’s 2.8 million citizens in response to the COVID-19 pandemic is helping to help improve health and care services and save lives.

The session centred around the analysis of the benefits that have been realised in the first year of deployment, and to assess the future development plans in using the data for wider population health and more person-centred care across Greater Manchester.

The GM Care Record is a partnership between Health Innovation Manchester, the GM Health and Social Care Partnership, the 10 Greater Manchester localities and technology provider Graphnet. Over 500 health and social care organisations provide data into the GM Care Record, with over 10,000 care professionals using it every month.

As well as improving direct care, anonymised GM Care Record data is being used for research and planning purposes to gain a greater understanding of population health needs, where resources should be prioritised and the impact of interventions.

Speakers at the webinar session included Guy Lucchi, Digital Innovation Director at Health Innovation Manchester and Dr Paula Bennett, Associate Director of Clinical Development and Utilisation Management Unit Lead at Health Innovation Manchester.

Guy Lucchi said: “One of the key things that we did when COVID-19 hit was to refocus our digital priorities, and a huge amount of work has been done over the last 18 months in GM to address the pandemic… The GM Care Record has been a pivotal digital asset that has helped us address the challenges around COVID-19.”