Digital public services plans outlined for Greater Manchester

The Leader of the Stockport Council and Greater Manchester’s lead for Digital City Region, Councillor Elise Wilson has shared the city-region’s ambitions for digitising public services, the Digital Platform, via a blog post.

In her blog post, Cllr Wilson has shared how while many public services, such as NHS organisations have invested in new digital technologies, there are issues in organisations being unable to share information, often at the expense of residents’ time and experience of accessing those services.

The proposed Digital Platform infrastructure will make it easier organisations to drive improvements in areas such as health and social care, by allowing different public sector bodies and organisations to share data more easily.

In her blog post, Cllr Wilson highlighted three problem areas in healthcare where improved digital communications could deliver improved outcomes to the public.

• Ambulances services do not have access to patient’s health records
• When someone is admitted to hospital, they do not have records of other prescribed medications they may be taking
• GP practices and social services do not get notified when individuals are discharged from hospital, often still relying on information being sent by fax as records are still paper-based

Cllr Wilson also announced that Early Years services would be the first to be digitised, initially in Bury and then rolled out across the city-region later this year. The new system will allow more children to be school ready, as well as allowing greater transparency for parents wishing to access their child’s records.

Work on the Greater Manchester Digital Platform is being carried out by organisations including Salford Royal Foundation Trust, Greater Manchester Combined Authority, Greater Manchester M Health and Social Care Partnership and Health Innovation Manchester.

Cllr Wilson’s full blog post is available to read here.