Medical Interoperability Gateway extended to urgent care staff in London

The Medical Interoperability Gateway (MIG) has been extended to urgent care staff in London so they can give more informed advice to vulnerable patients with Covid-19 symptoms.

The MIG, from Healthcare Gateway, provides a real-time view of the GP records of around eight million patients, following an initiative to grow its use across the capital.

The work is part of the OneLondon Local Health and Care Record Exemplar (LHCRE) programme, which aims to join up health information across the capital. A Citizens’ Summit was held in July 2020, giving Londoners the opportunity to tell national and local health leaders a mandate for how they expect their data to be used.

Stephen East, chief technology and delivery architect for Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust, said: “When Covid-19 hit us, NHS 111 and other urgent care staff were inundated with patients who needed the right advice on where to go for care and what they should do if they had Covid-19 symptoms. They urgently needed access to crucial medical information in patients’ GP records.

“The MIG provides a clear view of clinical information in real-time, and it can be easily and rapidly rolled out at scale. Within five days, we were able to extend its reach from six to 18 CCGs covering the vast majority of London GPs.”

Via the MIG, clinicians using the Cerner Millennium system at seven major hospital trusts can now view a detailed care summary from the GP record. Provided as structured data, it includes a patient summary and demographics, problems, diagnoses, medication, risk & warnings, procedures and investigations, encounters, admissions, and referrals.

Peter Anderson managing director at Healthcare Gateway, added: “In response to the coronavirus outbreak our priority was to ensure patient data continued to flow to clinicians who need it most.

“Working with customers across the OneLondon LHCRE, we’re proud the MIG has been one of the trusted technologies to enable patient data sharing across the capital. Clinicians now have a holistic view of their patients to enhance care and make informed decisions efficiently.

“We aim to continue supporting record sharing to improve the full patient journey, building a better, more joined-up healthcare economy.”