This solution ensures that all providers involved in an individual's care can access vital information across healthcare services, improving coordination and treatment.
To complete this project, LLR collaborated with Clinitouch, the remote patient monitoring technology that powers 12 of the virtual ward pathways in use across LLR. On this service, patients use the remote monitoring app to input health data through tailored questionnaires and vital sign readings – all from home. Specialist clinical teams at LLR analyse this information to enable early detection and better-timed interventions for conditions such as COPD, heart failure, and community acquired pneumonia.
Toby Page, Architecture Consultant for the LLR Care Record who has led the project, commented: “LLR is involved in many services across the health system and one of the big challenges we have is mapping data in local systems to clean, structured information resources to make them widely available.
“Following user research involving health and care professionals, it was clear that there’s a world outside of virtual wards that can benefit from access to this patient information.
"For example, GPs, social care and other teams might not have any visibility of how a patient is being managed on a virtual ward until the pathway has ended.
“We wanted to create a dynamic, instant view of information that shows the bigger picture. For example, if a patient has been to hospital, received treatment or is receiving a package of social care support and is also on a virtual ward pathway, we can show these events together to present a richer view of the patients’ care journey – this is where structured information sharing really comes into its own.”
But despite the clear benefits, this type of data sharing is often uncommon in the healthcare sector.
“Stories around positive work with suppliers are very powerful because it’s not always the case in the industry. The Clinitouch team are passionate about the vision of shared architecture and open data standards which aligns with our design philosophy. It’s a key reason for the success of this project.”
While data sharing in the industry remains fragmented, projects like this are paving the way for more seamless collaborations, offering a clear framework for future integrations.
“This has been a gold-standard lesson in what good looks like for relationships between technical suppliers and organisations because we can use it as a blueprint.
"It has given us a host of benefits around new technical approaches too and a path to doing future integrations.
“Going forward, I'd love to see the industry shift towards an understanding of how suppliers are engaged to develop integrations for information sharing. A key issue is that organisations may buy something to support functional requirements and user interfaces, but then when they come to try and pull data out of it, they can't. The more we can get the commercial world on board with this way of working, the better for everyone.”
Duncan Harris, Chief Technology Officer at Clinitouch, added; “This project aims to address the common problem that multi-disciplinary teams don’t always get access to all the relevant information in a patient’s record. Tackling this problem effectively opens up opportunities for better decisions about patient care.”
“It’s rare to have such a solid alignment between a big ICS and technical supplier and working directly with them avoided the need for an intermediary, allowing for a far better quality of data to flow.
"It proves that adopting standards that are already there, rather than trying to reinvent your own way of storing and exchange data, is a sensible thing to do. We’re looking forward to seeing the impact that this longitudinal healthcare record has in the coming months.”
With NHS services under pressure due to limited clinical capacity, bed shortages, and rising care costs, virtual wards have become a key strategy. Clinitouch has been a trusted partner across LLR since 2014, including in one of England’s largest hospital-at-home programmes.
Joined by a mission to improve system integration, this project marks the first of many to come between Clinitouch and LLR.
If you found this story interesting, check out our CTO's article - Beyond the buzzword: what's the actual reality of interoperability?
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This solution ensures that all providers involved in an individual's care can access vital information across healthcare services, improving coordination and treatment.
To complete this project, LLR collaborated with Clinitouch, the remote patient monitoring technology that powers 12 of the virtual ward pathways in use across LLR. On this service, patients use the remote monitoring app to input health data through tailored questionnaires and vital sign readings – all from home. Specialist clinical teams at LLR analyse this information to enable early detection and better-timed interventions for conditions such as COPD, heart failure, and community acquired pneumonia.
Toby Page, Architecture Consultant for the LLR Care Record who has led the project, commented: “LLR is involved in many services across the health system and one of the big challenges we have is mapping data in local systems to clean, structured information resources to make them widely available.
“Following user research involving health and care professionals, it was clear that there’s a world outside of virtual wards that can benefit from access to this patient information.
"For example, GPs, social care and other teams might not have any visibility of how a patient is being managed on a virtual ward until the pathway has ended.
“We wanted to create a dynamic, instant view of information that shows the bigger picture. For example, if a patient has been to hospital, received treatment or is receiving a package of social care support and is also on a virtual ward pathway, we can show these events together to present a richer view of the patients’ care journey – this is where structured information sharing really comes into its own.”
But despite the clear benefits, this type of data sharing is often uncommon in the healthcare sector.
“Stories around positive work with suppliers are very powerful because it’s not always the case in the industry. The Clinitouch team are passionate about the vision of shared architecture and open data standards which aligns with our design philosophy. It’s a key reason for the success of this project.”
While data sharing in the industry remains fragmented, projects like this are paving the way for more seamless collaborations, offering a clear framework for future integrations.
“This has been a gold-standard lesson in what good looks like for relationships between technical suppliers and organisations because we can use it as a blueprint.
"It has given us a host of benefits around new technical approaches too and a path to doing future integrations.
“Going forward, I'd love to see the industry shift towards an understanding of how suppliers are engaged to develop integrations for information sharing. A key issue is that organisations may buy something to support functional requirements and user interfaces, but then when they come to try and pull data out of it, they can't. The more we can get the commercial world on board with this way of working, the better for everyone.”
Duncan Harris, Chief Technology Officer at Clinitouch, added; “This project aims to address the common problem that multi-disciplinary teams don’t always get access to all the relevant information in a patient’s record. Tackling this problem effectively opens up opportunities for better decisions about patient care.”
“It’s rare to have such a solid alignment between a big ICS and technical supplier and working directly with them avoided the need for an intermediary, allowing for a far better quality of data to flow.
"It proves that adopting standards that are already there, rather than trying to reinvent your own way of storing and exchange data, is a sensible thing to do. We’re looking forward to seeing the impact that this longitudinal healthcare record has in the coming months.”
With NHS services under pressure due to limited clinical capacity, bed shortages, and rising care costs, virtual wards have become a key strategy. Clinitouch has been a trusted partner across LLR since 2014, including in one of England’s largest hospital-at-home programmes.
Joined by a mission to improve system integration, this project marks the first of many to come between Clinitouch and LLR.
If you found this story interesting, check out our CTO's article - Beyond the buzzword: what's the actual reality of interoperability?
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