Northgate Managed Services has been announced as the preferred bidder to roll out a clinical portal service, based on technology from Carefx, for NHS Lothian, NHS Fife, NHS Borders and NHS Dumfries and Galloway.

Scotland’s NHS has researched the use of clinical portals as a method of reducing costs and administration while expediting patient services. The research included a 2009 survey of more than 3,240 clinicians, determining their needs for clinical portals.

“The clinical portal initiative is widely supported by clinicians,” said Graham Gault, head of information management & technology, NHS Dumfries and Galloway. “Northgate Managed Services and Carefx have provided a prototype for the consortium which has proved that it can integrate with the different systems used across the four health boards and provide clinicians with a single view of the patient across each of the regions and real-time patient information, with the utmost accuracy.”

Gault added that the portal will allow clinicians to securely access real-time, relevant patient data at point-of-care.

“Clinical portals can significantly speed up patient services and cut down on bureaucracy as the technology will pick up data from wherever it is stored and display it instantly,” said James Turnbull, managing director, infrastructure solutions, Northgate Managed Services.

“There are clear advantages in opting for a solution which brings together the information from existing systems rather than scrapping them and undertaking huge projects to install new ones,” noted Wayne Parslow, European vice president and general manager, EMEA, Carefx.

The technology, which was built on the Carefx Fusionfx platform, aims to deliver personalized patient data instantly to clinicians.