The States of Jersey Health and Social Services Department has announced that will develop an island-wide integrated care record to support acute, community, mental health and social care services, using InterSystems TrakCare.

A ten year contract was signed yesterday by Anne Pryke, minister for health and social services, and Graham Frost, managing director for InterSystems Northern Europe.

The foundation phase of the project will see InterSystems deploy its TrakCare patient administration system, maternity, accident and emergency and theatre modules and mental health law administration. Pharmacy will be provided by InterSystems’ partner, JAC.

The Department hopes that a second phase will add order communications and results reporting, community, adult social care, care planning, and care pathways, with electronic prescribing provided by JAC.

Later phases of the project will include integrating data from 15 different departmental systems and an existing child health application, using the InterSystems integration platform, Ensemble.

Mike Pollard, chief executive of Jersey Health and Services Department said: “The deployment will lead to improved data quality and provide far better support to all our professional staff, enabling them to offer a far superior service to our patients, wherever they are operating.”

Jersey Health and Social Services Department says a growing elderly population and a growing complexity of treatments were behind its decision to invest in an integrated care record.

The formal procurement process for a solution began in November 2006, with 13 potential suppliers selected. The shortlist was reduced to five before InterSystems won the contract.

The funding for the foundation project, which should take between 12 and 18 months, has already been secured and the implementation will begin straight away. However, the source of funding for the next phase of the project is still unclear.

Phil Birchall, healthcare business development director at InterSystems, told E-Health Insider that this was not a negative thing.

“The key point is that they were ready and keen to sign the contract and start work as quickly as possible to deliver the benefits rather than postpone it in order to wait for further funding,” he said.

Discussions are also in progress about how Jersey can work with the island’s independent primary care doctors to provide them with access to the central TrakCare Patient Master Index, and to enable their use of TrakCare electronic patient record summaries, referrals, scheduling, results reporting, and order communications in the future.

Graham Frost, managing director for InterSystems Northern Europe, said: “The provision of citizen’s healthcare records at any point of care on the island is the holy grail that most large healthcare organisations are seeking.

“Now Jersey will be at the forefront of illustrating how this can be achieved and delivered rapidly.”

TrakCare is a web-based healthcare information system used by more than 25 hospitals, community care facilities, laboratories and governments world-wide.

The company describes it as a complete enterprise-wide clinical and administrative solution that connects with existing legacy systems and other best of breed applications.