New Forward Thinking Birmingham service goes live with Carenotes and Carenotes Mobile

16 June 2016 – Forward Thinking Birmingham, the first mental health service for 0-25 year-olds in the country, has gone live using Carenotes from Advanced as its electronic patient record solution. Carenotes will enhance communication and access to information across the organisation, ensuring a smooth pathway of care for patients.

The contract is worth approximately £1.3 million over five years and the solution was implemented within a month of the contract being signed, in time for the launch of the new service at the start of April. The second stage of the project will see the Carenotes Mobile app and patient portal added.

Forward Thinking Birmingham is a partnership between five mental health providers*, led by Birmingham Children’s Hospital, aimed at closing the gap between children and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) and adult mental health services. The partnership involves a mixture of NHS providers, private sector providers and charities, and will be supporting around 15,000 children and young adults every year.

As the service runs across six locations, it needed a user-friendly electronic patient record solution to aid decision-making between the different providers and provide staff with central access to information.

Advanced was selected through the London Procurement Partnership over four other suppliers due to its ease of use, cost-effectiveness and mobile functionality. The software is being hosted on the N3 NHS cloud network.

Adam Carson, Associate Director of IT at Birmingham Children’s Hospital, says, “Carenotes has become our central port of call for all clinical information and is critical to the aims of the programme. It allows us to manage the pathway of care for 0-25 year-olds in a way that was not possible before, ensuring smooth transfers of information and services between the different stages of a patient’s care.”

Two of the organisations involved in the programme – Worcestershire Health and Care NHS Trust and Priory Group – previously used Carenotes but the system is now acting as the central information point across all five providers. Around 350 staff in a variety of clinical roles are using the system for recording appointments, clinical notes and assessments.

Carenotes provides Forward Thinking Birmingham’s staff with fast and easy access to information wherever and whenever they need it, meaning they are no longer carrying around paper records and writing notes by hand. This is saving the organisation time and paper, and will also generate significant cost savings in the future.

Forward Thinking Birmingham is due to go live with Carenotes Mobile shortly. The app will reduce travelling time and generate further efficiencies. Later in the year it will also implement Carenotes’ patient portal which will enable patients to access their medical records themselves.

Carson adds, “We are a new service involving different staff from different providers, so we needed an electronic system that was easy to use and could be implemented quickly. Carenotes really supports the way we work collaboratively and we also liked the mobile application and patient portal that Carenotes offers natively, as these are two features that will be hugely beneficial for us.

“Carenotes Mobile is going to make it even easier for staff to access information on the go, meaning they spend less time on administration and more time with patients, while giving our patients access to their records is something that is cutting-edge within the NHS. Our service is sure to grow in the coming years and Carenotes will support that growth and help us to operate as efficiently as possible and focus resources on our patients.”

This contract further increases Advanced’s presence in the region following the opening of its new Midlands headquarters at Birmingham’s Mailbox building, which is bringing 400 new jobs to the city.

*The Forward Thinking Birmingham partnership consists of Birmingham Children’s Hospital, Worcestershire Health and Care NHS Trust, the Priory Group, Beacon UK and The Children’s Society.

-ENDS-

Notes to Editor

For an image of Forward Thinking Birmingham please click here

About Advanced

Advanced is the third largest provider of software and IT Services to the UK market.

Through our enterprise and market focused solutions we positively impact millions of people’s lives through continually investing in our people, partnerships and own technologies to stay focused on our markets’, customers’ and their stakeholders’ needs.

We enable our customers to drive efficiencies, savings and growth opportunities through focused, right-first-time software solutions that evolve with the changing needs of their business and the markets they operate in.

True partnership is the defining thing that makes us different from the competition. We pride ourselves on delivering focused software solutions for public sector, enterprise commercial and health & care organisations that simplify complex business challenges and deliver immediate value.

Advanced is a Sunday Times Top Track 250 Company 2015 and was ranked in the Deloitte UK Fast 50 which recognises the 50 fastest growing technology companies in the UK and a winner of the Tech Company of the Year in PwC’s UK Tech Awards in 2014.

www.oneadvanced.com

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About Forward Thinking Birmingham

Commissioned by Birmingham South Central Clinical
Commissioning Group (CCG) on behalf of all Birmingham CCGs, the Forward Thinking Birmingham partnership combines the expertise of Birmingham Children’s Hospital, Worcestershire Health and Care NHS Trust, the Priory Group, Beacon UK and The Children’s Society.

Birmingham Children’s Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has been the established lead provider for the delivery of community and inpatient mental health services up to 18 years of age for children and young people in Birmingham and the West Midlands for over 15 years, and is recognised for its excellence in areas such as safeguarding.

Worcestershire Health and Care NHS Trust is a leading provider of mental health and community services. Our specialist Mental Health provision includes services provided to children, adolescents, adults and older people who are supported in both community and inpatient settings. Our services are also designed to ensure effective transition between services including ensuring that the transition between children’s mental health and adult mental health is as seamless as possible.

Beacon UK are managed care leaders in mental health, specialising in helping people achieve and sustain recovery in community settings. Beacon UK does not provide care, but organises multiple services so that support is tailored to the individual. To realise its goal of transforming mental health recovery, Beacon offers world class mental health case management, system-wide pathway coordination, and insightful analytics that improve the delivery of care. Its mission is to help people with mental health problems live life to their fullest potential.

The Children’s Society changes the lives of the country’s most disadvantaged children and teenagers by delivering frontline support services and campaigning for change. It works closely with a wide range of community and voluntary organisations to tackle poverty and neglect and is a lead researcher in the field of children’s emotional well-being. Its experience and approachhas been proven to build bridges in communities and improve the mental resilience of young people. It has been a driving force in supporting children in the West Midlands for over 100 years, last year alone working with more than 3,000 children and teenagers across the region, and has formed a partnership with Birmingham City Council to bring the voices of children and teenagers into the future of the city.

Priory Group is the leading provider of behavioural care in the UK. Its purpose is to make a real and lasting difference for everyone it supports. Priory Healthcare runs the largest network of mental healthcare hospitals and clinics in the country, providing treatment for addictions and conditions including depression, self-harming, and eating disorders. It treats 20,000 patients a year at more than 50 sites. In Birmingham, the Priory’s
Woodbourne Hospital has a team of psychiatrists, psychologists and therapists treating adults and children. Priory Education Services manage UK schools for more than 1,000 pupils with emotional and behavioural difficulties including autism, alongside Craegmoor, a Priory provider of specialist community care.

https://forwardthinkingbirmingham.org.uk