Dotted Eyes Health Portal enables Birmingham Health and Wellbeing Partnership to more cost effectively share data with GPs and across all partnerships to deliver on new healthcare reforms

Birmingham, England, 22 July 2010 – Dotted Eyes, data and information specialists to the UK public sector and commercial business, today announces that Birmingham Health and Wellbeing Partnership (BHWP) has selected its Health Portal solution to facilitate unprecedented information sharing at every level of the Partnership organisations.

Hot-on-the-heels of the new NHS White Paper release, which focuses heavily on shared information for patients, local authorities and healthcare professionals, the BHWP announcement marks the formal launch of Health Portal, developed by Dotted Eyes to meet the burgeoning need of healthcare professionals to access, visualise and share data through a simple and cost-effective system; freeing up the resources of data analysts and decentralising cumbersome data hubs to deliver access at the point of need.

“In many ways, the key imperatives of the new healthcare reform are already established principles of Birmingham Health & Wellbeing Partnership,” said Jim McManus, Joint Director of Public Health at BHWP.

“Health Portal will equip the Partnership to take information sharing to new levels to meet these imperatives. In opening up data access at both senior and departmental levels across the BHWP and facilitating GP access, whilst enabling temporary and shifting healthcare considerations, we see Health Portal enabling hugely improved decision-making at the ‘coalface’.

“Critically, it will enable BWHP to provide more effective – and importantly, cost-effective - services to support the new commissioning structure and deliver on health improvements and public health outcomes whilst meeting the onus on joint partnerships laid out by the new White Paper.”

In the first phase of the roll out, Health Portal will facilitate internal NHS information access across partner organisations, equipping new and existing partners, specifically new GP Consortia, to easily and cost-effectively share a broad reach of information, for example, lifestyle data, hospital admissions and death from diseases. Expansion of the capability in later phases will open up access to external data sharing from intranet to internet, embracing wider public service access, including local authorities and emergency and social services.

As data and information specialists with more than 20 years in the field, Dotted Eyes works with some 900 public and private sector organisations, including 130 PCTs and all ambulance services in England and Wales, as well as many household commercial brand names.

“In its simplest form, Health Portal democratises healthcare information,” said Ben Allan, Managing Director at Dotted Eyes.

“It’s a single platform which enables accurate and better informed decision-making across partner organisations at every level by equipping a wider reach of healthcare professionals – from midwives to clinical directors and commissioners – to access more freely available, current and relevant information. The system essentially revolutionises data by simplifying, automating and integrating the entire process, opening up true ‘access to all’.

“Critically, Health Portal underpins the key imperatives of the healthcare reform in facilitating new GP Consortia, the Local Health Watch, Health Watch England, NHS Foundations, Local Authorities and all related partnerships to share vital information, to deliver better patient outcomes.  By late autumn it will meet Andrew Lansley’s public facing directives to enable patients to access personal information, effectively facilitating the ‘no decision about me, without me’,  Coalition Government healthcare mantra.”

Birmingham Health & Wellbeing Partnership is rolling out the first phase of Health Portal across all its partner organisations over the summer.  Initial results will be reported in the autumn.

For more information on Health Portal, please visit: www.dottedeyes.com/healthportal