Digitisation of health patient records (FOI)

Request

What progress and expenditure has there been, to date, on the digitising of patient records in the Health Department and progress in making HCS fully digitised. If there has been progress, what are the costs and when is the planned completion date?

Response

A project has begun to transform paper records held across the Government of Jersey and non-ministerial departments. This includes patient records within Health and Community Services (HCS).

The HCS project has commenced with a discovery phase to identify the organisation’s requirements for a digital solution, to ensure the right solution is procured to digitise those records in scope. This discovery phase includes a pilot study, currently underway in HCS. The intention is to procure the technology to digitise paper records towards the end of this year and into the early part of 2024, with implementation taking place through 2024.

There is an agreed budget of £2.18m for this Government-wide project in the Government Plan, split across 2023 and 2024:

Government Plan 2023 to 2026 (gov.je)

In addition to the digitisation of existing paper records, there are other initiatives in progress within HCS. These centre round the implementation of a new Electronic Patient Record (EPR) in the General Hospital, which replaces the legacy system that has been in use for the last 10 years.

The new EPR was implemented on 28 May 2023 and HCS will expand the system capabilities through 2023 / 2024, enabling patient information to be recorded digitally.