nhs staff looking at computer screen

Major records digitisation project underway at Barnsley Hospital NHS FT

Barnsley Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has embarked on a major medical records digitisation project with partners System CIMMJ Systems and Iron Mountain that will see more than 180,000 medical records securely scanned into the IMMJ Systems MediViewer™ Electronic Document Management System (EDMS)

The project is part of the Trust's EPR programme, working in partnership with supplier System C. It aims to put the Trust at the forefront of digital excellence by providing clinicians with intuitive digital workflows, decision support and care planning capabilities to provide patient care.

As part of this digitisation programme, the Trust went live with the fully integrated EDMS MediViewer™ from IMMJ Systems in Rheumatology in early September 2021 and is now live across most specialties.

“This go-live has taken Barnsley one step closer towards its digital vision”, said the Trust’s Chief Clinical Information Officer (CCIO) and Consultant Gastroenterologist, Dr Dominic Bullas.  “I’m very grateful to the digital leaders at Barnsley and our partners for getting it across the line and providing staff with an improved solution to support patient care.”

The MediViewer™ EDMS software integrates seamlessly with System C's Careflow EPR to provide clinical-context launching of the digitised record. The tightly integrated platform enables clinical and clerical users to view the complete history for each patient attending the Trust and search through the record for key clinical documents via the MediViewer™ SmartIndexing™ technology. 

Iron Mountain (IRM) is contracted to digitise all active patient records for the Trust, whilst the Trust manages the day forward scanning in-house with the support of IMMJ Systems. Iron Mountain’s ingestion process provides electronic handshakes as content flows between the delivery systems, ensuring strict compliance with latest data privacy and industry regulations.

The combined solutions will provide instantaneous access to scanned medical records via the CareFlow EPR, safely and securely. The speed and intuitive design of the MediViewer™ EDMS means that simple but rich features enable clinical users to easily find the key documentation needed at the point of care, especially as MediViewer™ not only uses optical character recognition to ingest information (scanned or born-digital) but applies its SmartIndexing™ technology over the top, classifying information so it can be found via a single click of a button.

IMMJ Systems’ Chief Operations Officer - Lisa Harris, said: "This is a significant milestone for the Trust. Barnsley Hospital has successfully deployed MediViewer™, providing secure access to key clinical information at the point of care and delivered this throughout the most challenging period in NHS history.

“This is a considerable achievement, and IMMJ Systems are delighted that the Trust are already seeing tangible benefits. Deploying an EDMS introduces significant cash releasing and operational benefits, and Barnsley is a prime example of a Trust benefitting from digitised patient records, even early in its deployment.”

Markus Bolton, joint CEO at System C, said: "I'm delighted that Barnsley has met another milestone on its path to digital excellence. The electronic management of records stored on paper is a key part of a hospital digitisation process and national objectives towards paperless healthcare.”

Simon McNair, Director of Healthcare at Iron Mountain, said “Iron Mountain has spent many years supporting NHS Trusts in their move to creating a digitised, interoperable and connected health and care systems. This solution, where the digitisation process transitions records seamlessly into the MediViewer™ platform, takes the service to a whole new level in terms of fast results for improved patient care, cost efficiencies, and a better clinician-led user experience.”

NHE March/April 2024

NHE March/April 2024

A window into the past, present and future of healthcare leadership.

- Steve Gulati, University of Birmingham 

More articles...

View all
Online Conference

Presenting

2024 Online Conferences

In partnership with our community of health sector leaders responsible for delivering the UK's health strategy across the NHS and the wider health sector, we’ve devised a collaborative calendar of conferences and events for industry leaders to listen, learn and collaborate through engaging and immersive conversation. 

All our conferences are CPD accredited, which means you can gain points to advance your career by attending our online conferences. Also, the contents are available on demand so you can re-watch at your convenience.

National Health Executive Podcast

Ep 42. Leadership in the NHS

In episode 42 of the National Health Executive podcast we were joined by Steve Gulati who is an associate professor at the University of Birmingham as well as director of healthcare leadership at the university’s Health Services Management Centre.