NHS up in the clouds with Flexiant & Edinburgh Napier
For the first time, NHS patients will have complete control over their medical records and the power to decide who can access their data. In the first large scale deployment of the cloud in e-health a pilot at Chelsea & Westminster Hospital aims to make it easier for patients to manage their illness and make communication between patient, consultant and GP faster and more efficient.
Today patients often have to wait days or even weeks for the results of clinical trials in a system still largely based on letters to arrange appointments, change treatment or make recommendations being sent between patient, consultant and GP.
To tackle this problem researchers at Edinburgh Napier University and Imperial College, along with clinicians from Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, London have developed a next generation e-health platform using the Flexiant cloud infrastructure.
Flexiant is the software and services company behind Europe’s first cloud platform and following 18 months research and development the E-Health Cloud is now ready to be tested and a demonstrator due to go live on Flexiant’s public cloud next month. The e-Health Cloud overcomes many of the existing problems with usage of electronic patient records in the NHS, including the issues related to a lack of common patient record standards, and the inability to share between different parts of the health and social care domains.
Professor Bill Buchanan, from Edinburgh Napier University, presented the new E-Health Cloud platform at the Innovation with Healthcare conference this month in the Barbican, London and showed that the collaboration aims to integrate assisted living, with primary and secondary healthcare, in order that data can be used throughout all phases of health care treatment.
According to Buchanan “the current infrastructure in the UK often has a non-integrated approach to patient care, where data is not used effectively between GP, hospital and assisted living. Our system allows for data to be stored with its context, such as where it was captured, and then used in whatever way is necessary, through well-managed clinical services. Security is integrated into every single transaction, and we host it on Flexiant’s cloud, to give us a scaleable and robust e-Health infrastructure.”
Along with Prof Bill Buchanan, the key players in the development of the platform have been Professor Derek Bell, the clinical lead at Chelsea and Westminster, Professor Christoph Thuemmler and Dr Lu Fan. At present the e-Health platform has been created as both a private e-Health Cloud within Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, and also as a public demonstrator on the Flexiant public cloud.
Tony Lucas, Flexiant’s Founder explains: “By hosting the data in the cloud as soon as results are published the patient can go online and access them, sharing them in real time with everyone who needs to see them. They will be able to invite GP, consultant, health carer and family members - people the patient trusts and who need to know the results. This has massive implications for the future of patient treatment in the UK. For the first time patients can have control over their treatment and their records and that is enormously empowering.”
The demonstrator uses a unique patient simulator, which generates clinical parameters, such as body temperature and blood pressure, for certain patient illnesses. This will show how the clinical services can be used in clinical diagnostics, such as with a risk assessment score or an early warning score (EWS).
Overall the aim of the demonstrator with simulated patients is to increase human trust within next generation health care infrastructure. The security of patient records will be critical to the success of this pilot and Flexiant will implement a multi-factor authentication process using technology that builds on and integrates seamlessly with existing NHS security systems.
Key clinical services can then be accessed from a range of devices, including web pages and mobile phones. A key focus is on the identification of the role of the clinical person, typically using multiple identification methods, in order to gain the rights to certain services. This integrates with a new governance policy, which defines the overall rights of clinicians to the access to clinical services.
By allowing patients full control, it is they who ultimately decide who they will share information with. The developed system uses new identity checking methods, including mobile phone checking and trusted identity providers like Facebook or Paypal.
A Chelsea and Westminster spokesman explains: “Our Foundation trust is at the forefront for providing technological innovations in the hospital clinical environment, to improve patient care. Implementation of the cloud infrastructure at the hospital will be one of many enhancements made to patient care by Professor Derek Bell through his role as the director of NWL CLARHC which has an ethos of closing the second translational gap and bringing research into practice."
The two year project is funded by the TSB and EPSRC.
