'Coordinate My Care' Recognised by Prestigious NHS Innovation Accelerator Programme

LONDON, November 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Coordinate My Care (CMC), the NHS clinical service which provides digital urgent care planning across London has been shortlisted as one of only eight programmes across the country to receive recognition from the NHS Innovation Accelerator (NIA) programme.

The aim of the NIA programme is to deliver on the commitment detailed in the NHS' Five Year Forward View. It sets out to create the conditions and cultural change necessary for proven innovations to be adopted faster and more systematically through the NHS for demonstrable patient and population benefit.

Each of the innovations are evidence-based and cost-saving and focus on providing solutions to key challenges facing the NHS, including better prevention of ill health, improved management of long term conditions and early intervention into diseases.

Professor Julia Riley, Clinical Lead of CMC, says "As a service we have grown from an innovative project to a pan-London service and the idea of being recognised for this work at such an important level is very gratifying. The NIA recognition and the support it brings will give us the visibility and acceleration to improve our task of transforming behaviour and delivering more efficient and improved care for patients through digital technology."

Currently CMC, which is hosted by The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, securely shares urgent care plans across London both in and out-of-hours, to GPs, community nurses, community palliative care teams, hospitals, hospices, social workers, London Ambulance Service, NHS 111 and care homes to ensure that all the health and social care professional teams involved in a patient's care are connected 24/7.

Over 31,000 care plans have been created to date and the focus of the service in the coming year will be to increase its interoperability with other health and social care systems following a successful link up with the main GP IT system provider, EMIS Web. Furthermore the service will give patients the option to start their own care plans online which they can then discuss with their chosen healthcare professional to ensure their personal preferences as well as the clinical picture are all captured in one single urgent care plan.

"The key aims of CMC are supporting the patient in being front and centre of their healthcare but also supporting emergency and urgent care services who might attend to a patient out of hours and not have that continuity of relationship or medical history in the short space of time that we are caring for them. CMC has been a paradigm shift for our staff and has changed the way we treat this increasing cohort of patients for the better" said David Whitmore, Paramedic and Senior Clinical Advisor to the Medical Director of the London Ambulance Service.

The CMC service will benefit from the support of the NIA programme by gaining input from leading NHS and industry figures to help the service grow into new areas and expand its reach in areas of London where uptake could be improved. Cultural change to ensure urgent care planning is seen as a priority, ongoing efforts to achieve a paperless NHS and ensuring the many systems operating within the NHS speak to one another - are some of the challenges that CMC hopes to address with the support of the programme.

Sir Bruce Keogh, NHS England's National Medical Director, said:

"With rising demand and escalating costs, innovation is not an option but a necessity if we are to build a sustainable NHS. The innovations selected for this programme have the potential to deliver better value for the taxpayer whilst making patient interactions with the NHS safer and more personal."

Notes to Editors 

About Coordinate My Care  

Coordinate My Care was set up in 2010 to address gaps in end of life and urgent care service provision. CMC is an NHS service that helps patient record their views and wishes within an electronic personalised urgent care plan. Currently CMC, shares urgent care plans across London both in and out-of-hours, to GPs, community nurses, community palliative care teams, hospitals, hospices, social workers, London Ambulance Service, NHS 111 and care homes to ensure that all the healthcare professional teams involved in a patient's care are connected 24/7. http://www.coordinatemycare.co.uk

About NHS Innovation Accelerator Programme 

• For media enquiries contact NHS England's Press and Media Team: [email protected]
• The NHS Innovation Accelerator (NIA) supports some of the best national and international healthcare innovators with evidence-based innovations to help improve health outcomes and give patients access to the latest products, services and technology at lower cost.
• The NIA is an NHS England initiative hosted by UCLPartners in partnership with the country's 15 Academic Health Science Networks (AHSNs). For more information, visit http://www.ahsnnetwork.com
• For more information about the NHS Innovation Accelerator visit http://www.england.nhs.uk/ourwork/innovation/nia
• Information on each of the innovations and their creators is available at https://www.england.nhs.uk/ourwork/innovation/nia/case-studies/

SOURCE Coordinate My Care