An electronic patient record (EPR) is a system of managing clinical information, to make it easily available for use by doctors, nurses, allied healthcare professionals, admin and patients.
Across the three acute hospitals in Norfolk and Waveney we are working on our biggest digital programme to date - introducing an Electronic Patient Record (EPR) system.
The EPR is a digital tool which will essentially replace paper-based patient records over time.
This technology will bring many benefits to our staff, patients and communities, ultimately helping us provide better, safer joined-up care for everyone.
The EPR will improve care by enabling clinicians and operational staff to access information quicker, and help them make more effective and personalised decisions, as it provides staff with instant, real-time information.
The EPR programme will take time to implement across our three acute hospitals with us aiming for the system to go-live in 2026.
The planned three acute trust - James Paget University Hospital, Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital and Queen Elizabeth Hospital King's Lynn - integrated Electronic Patient Record (EPR) programme is a flagship project for our hospitals and will support organisation-wide transformation of how we work and deliver care.
Some of the aims of the EPR include:
- Safer care for patients because electronic notes are always available to all clinicians
- Reduction in the number of times health and social care staff need to log into different systems, so they can spend more time actually caring for patients
- Improved patient safety by reducing the reliance on slow paper processes, and risks of lost or misplaced documents
- Support for more flexible and collaborative ways of working
- Making information more readily available for clinical decision-making, quality improvement, and research purposes
- Improve operational performance, and putting our patients at the centre of our care.
The EPR programme team, consisting of doctors, nurses, managers, operational, admin and digital health colleagues, continue to work to implement this transformational change. Having secured approval for the business case and appointed Meditech as the supplier of a system called Expanse, the team is now working on adapting that system to meet our specific needs. They are conducting a number of design, build and test phases which will be approved by all impacted teams.
Most NHS hospitals have, or are working on, an EPR to help them face the demands of 21st century healthcare. This is a really exciting time for our three organisations and we’re now looking to take this forward.