An electronic system introduced to improve services for patients and more efficient working for health care staff has created its one millionth clinical assessment.
PARIS is a system which was introduced across Cardiff and Vale University Health Board (UHB) to provide core clinical information for staff across Acute and Community Mental Health, District Nursing, Health Visiting, Community Podiatric Therapies and Community Child Health.
The system, which has been operational at the health board since 2005, is currently accessed by 2,800 UHB staff and assists clinicians by enabling shared patient notes, cutting down on duplicate tasks, providing better risk assessments and giving staff access to patient records regardless of their location or time.
Cardiff and Vale UHB has led the way in Wales by introducing this clinical information system for services that previously had little IT infrastructure.
In line with the health board’s ‘Shaping our Future Wellbeing Strategy’, the development of technology and access to patient information within a community setting will help assist with defining the ‘Perfect Locality’, one of the health board’s future priorities.
Darren Shore, Team Leader for the North Crisis Team for Mental Health said: “The Crisis Service provides Emergency Assessment and Home Treatment for people who suffer from serious and enduring mental illness. As a 24 hour team we rely heavily on the Paris system to help us deliver high quality care to the clients we come into contact with. Paris is essential for us to function as a team.
“Paris truly has transformed the way we work, we have access to clinical notes at the click of a button and can use the clinical records to help us plan accurate and safe care plans for the clients. The clinical notes held in Paris are live, and as soon as the entry is saved onto the system all professionals can see this information. This is crucial given the risks that we deal with on a daily basis.”
PARIS Programme Manager, Mark Cahalane, said: “The millionth clinical assessment creation highlights the hard work of everyone involved since PARIS was launched over a decade ago, with more than 4000 system developments and changes including new screens, new reports and new letters.
“This is a great achievement for all those involved and is a testament to the hard work and dedication of our programme staff and our clinical service staff to deliver better outcomes for patients.”
PARIS is supported by a core team responsible for support, development, reporting, informatics, changes, testing and communication of the system. The team works closely with each clinical board to ensure the clinical need is well communicated and addressed. This ensures the system is constantly evolving at pace to support the ever changing models of clinical care delivery. All members of the core team are dedicated to ensuring that patient care and clinical safety are at the very heart of what they do.
UHB Head of IT and Strategy, Nigel Lewis, who has been involved within PARIS since pre-procurement in 2003, noted: “The PARIS programme has, from its outset, been a clinically led innovation, and in doing so has boldly implemented a number of new ways of working.
“What makes PARIS unique and workable as a clinical system is the software’s capacity to be re-fashioned by the vendors to address national, statutory or best practice healthcare provision, and provide speedy, local and clinician fashioned casenote and assessment screens that address service or even team specific requirements.”
