GE Finnamore report GNCR Overview
This summarises the work undertaken by GE Healthcare Finnamore (GEHCF), acting as a vendor neutral independent advisor, in conjunction with the North East and North Cumbria Connected Health Cities (NENC CHC) project team, and its wide range of stakeholders, to develop a preferred architecture and set of requirements for a Shared Record and Analytics Platform known as the Great North Care Record (GNCR).
The GNCR seeks to initially integrate data across primary, secondary and social care as well as the universities of the North East. In addition, data will be made available more widely across the region, with appropriate safeguards and sharing agreements, for analysis by health and social care organisations and for university and clinical research. This will eventually enable a more complete analysis of patient journeys along NHS care pathways, enabling investigation of not only what is happening but also why, and how the issues could be addressed with actionable insight. This will help close the information gaps between commissioning, audit, public health intelligence and research, supporting systems to learn routinely.
In order to develop a preferred architecture and set of requirements for the GNCR, the GEHCF team:
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Reviewed over 140 documents from health, social care and academic organisations
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Undertook semi-structured interviews with 75 stakeholders from across the North East
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Ran four requirements workshops, focussed on systems architecture, information governance, digital care records and research and analytics, with over 80 people in attendance across the four sessions
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Undertook an options appraisal workshop with over 20 people.
The key outputs from these activities were as follows:
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Agreement on seven categories for Guiding Principles for development of the GNCR
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Agreement on five clinical care and four research / analytics use cases that will primarily be used to ensure that the GNCR meets the needs of its wide range of stakeholders
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Development and agreement on a generic Health Information Exchange (HIE) reference architecture and a preferred architecture model for GNCR that supports (as a minimum) the agreed set of use cases
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Agreement on the ‘Publish and Subscribe’ and ‘Gateway Services’ models that will enable the GNCR to appropriately support the wide range of data sharing requirements identified by stakeholders
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Agreement on a preferred data management model for GNCR and a description of how it would support both STP based localities and regional providers of health and care services
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Preferred commercial strategy for procuring the GNCR, an agreed set, guiding principles for vendor selection and a core set of required capabilities from the supplier community
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A high-level assessment of 18 potential suppliers against a series of agreed criteria, leading to a range of likely costs for GNCR implementation based on supplier responses to requests for information
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A high-level assessment of the benefits to be delivered by implementing GNCR
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Preferred option for the Governance and Service Management arrangements of the GNCR, including the proposed Delivery Vehicle for implementation and on-going ‘Business as Usual’
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A high-level project plan outlining the proposed project workstreams and the timelines for implementation