Our Partnership is made up of organisations working closely together to plan services and address the challenges facing health and care services across the area.
In this section you will find links to useful information and publications about our partnership.
We are committed to meaningful conversations with people, on the right issues at the right time. We believe this is an important part of the way we work.
In this section you will find all Freedom of Information (FOI) requests made to our Partnership. You can also ask a question of your own.
Our approach is based on the ‘anytime, anywhere, any place’ philosophy. This will allow health and care professionals to work across public sector buildings. To acheive this we are taking forward three programmes of work:
A further strategic initiative that is being pursued across the whole of Yorkshire and Humber, and in association with the Academic Health Sciences Network, is the creation of an integrated health and care record. We have successfully become 1 of 5 national exemplar areas known as a LHCRE [local health and care record exemplar], based upon the experience and technologies already used locally within the WY&H Partnership. This will provide a major boost to our strategy to join up health and care information for improved direct care across our ‘places’. It will also allow us to pursue a ‘person held record’ for our citizens and forms the foundation for joining up data to help us better manage the health and care provision for our populations. We are at the start of this journey but we expect to give this particular focus over the next 2 years.
West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership are committed to ensuring that public and patient voices are at the centre of shaping our health and care services. Every level of our health care system needs to be informed by listening to those who use and care about our services.
We are looking for a patient representative to join the membership of a newly established Digital Board, to give a patient perspective to the development of a digital strategy and the progression of future digital initiatives across the region.
The ideal candidate will have an interest in improving health and care services through digital technology and be committed to their local community and provide a view of patients, unpaid carers and the public’s understanding and knowledge.
If you are interested, please complete a patient and public member expression of interest form.
As part of the urgent and emergency care pilot we have trialled direct booking from NHS 111 to general practices. This will mean that people dialling 111 can have an appointment made directly with their own practice if their need is less urgent. We are piloting NHS 111 online, a web-based tool which will give people greater access to urgent advice.
There is huge potential for digital technology to support healthier lifestyles, allow people to manage their own healthcare, and enable people to benefit from more fully from health and care services. We have recently developed a partnership with the Good things foundation to develop and test digital ‘wearables’ that support people with seeing and hearing difficulties to receive health services in a way that works better for them. This pilot is backed with £50,000 of national funding.
Interactive Digital achievements roadmap for 2017/18, and what is on the road ahead
Illustration of some of the other initiatives we progressed during 2016/17
Our region hosts 20% of total number of digital health jobs and we plan to work with our universities, through organizations like the Leeds Academic Health Partnership, to improve that number and to design new and ground breaking innovations that will allow us to tackle the challenges inherent in prevention and early intervention, and to promote an approach rooted in self-management. An example of this is Leeds adult social care and the clinical commissioning groups working closely with Samsung to trial new wearable devices that will prevent ill health in the frail elderly and people with long term conditions.
Widening Digital Participation, funded by NHS Digital and led by Good Things Foundation , aims to reduce digital exclusion in the UK, and ensure people have the skills they need to access relevant health information and health services online.
Phase 2 of this programme is working with 20 Pathfinder projects across England up to March 2020. A pathfinder is a bespoke, 12 month, funded project to co-design new ways of helping the most excluded people in England improve their health, or access to health, through digital mHabitat were asked by South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust to support their local pathfinder project. The project aimed to support improvements in accessing health and wellbeing services with citizens in the Kirklees area who have hearing and/or sight loss.
Read or download the NHS Digital Pathfinder report here (this document is hosted on the mHabitat website)
West Yorkshire Pathfinder project We are working with mHabitat on developing new ways of accessing healthcare providers for people who are hearing and/or sight impaired. To find out more information on this project and others - click on this link: https://tinyurl.com/yc8j2j65 Case studies Read about how local people are using digital technology to improve their lives. You can read their stories below: Kay's story Susannah and Alice's story Mario's story Charities using digital technology Leading charities such as Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB) and local charities like KVIN are also using technology to improve services for those with a visual impairment. The Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) charity supports blind and partially sighted people. Offerng practical and emotional support to those that need them - so they can continue living life to the full. You can find out more about them at www.rnib.org.uk The RNIB have a useful guide to all things digital which can help those who are blind and partially sighted - you can find it here. KVIN is a user-led organisation, providing services aimed at improving the lives of local sight impaired people through the use of technology. Peer support is at the heart of what they do, with a team of volunteers, many of whom are visually impaired themselves, they are ready to offer real and practical solutions to issues faced by their peers. Find out how KVIN are harnessing the power of new technology here. You can find out more about KVIN here: www.kvin.org.uk.
Anyone who travels to other public sector organisations as part of their job will understand how hard it can be to connect their laptop or tablet to a different WiFi network at a new location. Identifying the correct network, finding the password, and actually logging on, all wastes valuable time. You may also find, you have to tether to your mobile phone to gain internet access.
The Digital Teams across the West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Parnership are in the process of implementing Govroam, which is a WiFi network available to any public sector organisation. This means that for staff who visit a building with Govroam connectivity, they should have instant access to the internet and resources at their home organisation. Staff only need to log in once and will then automatically connect any time you are in a building with Govroam connectivity.
To access Govroad simply contact your local IT Service Desk to request access. Once this has been set up, you just search for Govroam WiFi in the same way as if you were connecting to your home broadband. When prompted to log in, enter the username and password that you normally use to access the computer in your host organisation (it may take a while to connect the first time). Once connected to Govroam, you just use the remote connection/VPN facility that you usually use to securely access your work device.
Download the Govroam Companion app to search for buildings with Govroam connectivity. This app is updated regularly as new buildings are connected across the country. There is already a wide coverage of Govroam across the West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership region and this is increasing on a regular basis.
A new partnership to provide health and care staff with better and faster access to vital information about the person in their care is being established across the Yorkshire and Humber region.
At the moment, in many areas GPs and other care professionals are often not able to access crucial patient information quickly if it is held in another part of the health service – sometimes having to rely on post or fax instead.
A new collaborative, the Yorkshire and Humber Digital Care Board aims to address these issues by using technology and digital innovations to link systems across health and care organisations, enabling care providers to work more closely together.
This will result in the creation of a new Yorkshire & Humber Care Record, which will also provide citizens with access to their information and encourage them to be more involved in looking after their health.
On Wednesday 27 June, NHS England announced that Yorkshire and Humber is one of five areas chosen to become ‘Local Health and Care Record Exemplars’ (LHCRE). NHS England launched the LHCRE programme to reduce unnecessary patient tests and improve patient safety through better working between hospitals, GPs and social care.
Each new partnership will receive up to £7.5 million over two years to put in place an electronic shared local health and care record that makes the relevant information about people instantly available to everyone involved in their care and support.
In June 2018, NHS England announced that Yorkshire and Humber is one of five areas chosen to become ‘Local Health and Care Record Exemplars’ (LHCRE). NHS England launched the LHCRE programme to reduce unnecessary patient tests and improve patient safety through better working between hospitals, GPs and social care.
This report summarises insight research commissioned to inform the Yorkshire and Humber Care Record. It aims to explore the beliefs that people have about how their health and care records could and should be used, their boundaries for what they are willing for their data to be used for, their concerns around how their data could be used, and the reassurances they want about how their data is safe.
Download and read the Joined up Yorkshire and Humber report
New Senior Responsible Officer (May 2019)
Dr John Byrne has been confirmed as the new Senior Responsible Officer for the Yorkshire & Humber Care Record - one of five exemplars within NHS England’s Local Health and Care Record programme.
Dr Byrne, an Executive Medical Director at Humber Teaching NHS Foundation Trust which provides mental health, community, GP, learning disability and specialist services also has a GP background.
He is also the executive lead for quality improvement and knows what is important to both staff and those accessing health and care services.
Read more about John's appointment...
What is the Yorkshire and Humber Care Record?
At the moment, every health and social care organisation that you use has a different set of patient or service user records for you. These records may duplicate information or one record might hold information about your treatment, care and support that another one doesn’t. To provide the best care to you as a patient or service user it is essential that health and social care professionals have access to the most up-to-date information.
It will be a secure virtual health and social care record. It will pull key information from different health and social care records and store it in one combined record. This enables health and social care professionals to find all the key information for your care in one place.
