Northern Ireland’s Ambulance Service Trust (NIAS) has awarded Ortivus UK the contract to develop mobile access to electronic patient records.
The move marks a significant stage in the trust’s Regional Electronic Ambulance Communications Hub (REACH) project, which is aimed at replacing paper records and joining up with the wider health and social care system in Northern Ireland.
The contract will initially run for six years, with options to extend for up to another four, and has been valued at £4.3 million.
The business case for REACH was signed off by the Department of Health and Department for Finance in June 2017 under its original project title of the ePatient Report Form. The procurement specification for the system emerged from a series of stakeholder workshops staged by the trust.
It will support the integration of records used by ambulance crews with the Northern Ireland Electronic Care Record, which brings together information from existing electronic systems in hospitals and clinics.
End to end
According to the contract notice, REACH “seeks to provide an end to end solution for electronic patient records within an e-health and mobile environment with the patient at the centre”.
Ortivus, which is based in Sweden, specialises in mobile solutions for emergency medical care and claims to provide 1,700 ambulances and 500 hospital beds with its technology.
Image by Ardfern, own work, CC BY-SA 3.0
