Referrals to community health services are all set to go digital.

The move is being hailed as an important step on the road to a fully integrated health record.

Referrals to and from various services - including GP surgeries, adult community nursing, children and families, podiatry, Hospice, adult speech and language therapy and Quit 4 You - can now been made paperless.

This will result in speedier referrals, without the need for paper requests to be sent, received and logged.

The system automatically fills in the necessary forms and paperwork, so that doctors and other healthcare professionals no longer have to do so, allowing them to spend more time focused on their clinical tasks and reducing red tape and bureaucracy.

This is estimated to result in a reduction in related temporary staff costs of 15% per annum within the next two years.

Costs for temporary bank staff for community health services for the last financial year were £108,000.

It also promises a substantial decrease in the amount of paper used across all community services, and the accompanying reduction in associated costs, estimated at 20% per annum, as well as eliminating the risk of referrals being mislaid, misunderstood or misfiled.

Print and stationery costs for community health services in the 2017-18 financial year were £44,000.

In a paper-based system a file can only be viewed by one user at a time. The new digital system, which is the same as that already used by the island’s GPs, permits several users to access a patient’s file simultaneously. This ensures that clinicians will always have the most up to date file available when they need it.

If a patient gives consent then the new system also allows specialist clinicians to view a patient’s GP record, with the exception of the GP’s hand-written notes, and vice versa.

To ensure patient confidentiality and transparency, the system can be audited at any point, ensuring that patients are able to see exactly who accessed any record and when it was done.

Another development has been the implementation of mobile working. This means that clinicians visiting patients out in the community can view and amend the patient’s medical records, as well as having the ability to view the GP records on a mobile device.

There is now no need for paper records to be carried by clinicians, further securing patient data.

Health and Social Care Minister David Ashford said: ’The final goal is to move to a fully integrated digital healthcare record for all. We’re not quite there yet but this is a real move towards achieving that.’