CASE STUDY

Food Train

Safe & Secure Data Sharing between the Medical and Voluntary Sector

Problem

Currently, voluntary sector organisations are an underused resource for many patient care scenarios. There are twice as many volunteers as the combined workforce of the NHS and Local Authorities.  Our research shows that voluntary sector service providers are not fully integrated with the health and statutory social care community. This can lead to inefficient coordination of resources available – for example, delayed discharges from hospital.

The biggest challenge in moving to a more integrated and collaborative approach is trust – particularly as the voluntary sector sits outside the legal and technology domains of the public sector.

Streamlining, and effectively integrating, three sources of care requires elements of a patient's personal details, medical information, and home care information to be shared between different parties, while protecting the individual's privacy.

In the example of malnutrition, half a million people over sixty-five in the UK are diagnosed with the condition, with a further million being at risk. These numbers have tripled over the last decade. 

Those suffering from malnutrition are twice as likely to visit their GP and three times as likely to be admitted to hospital than their peers. They also spend longer in hospital and are more likely to be promptly re-admitted after being discharged. 

Solution

Using the SICCAR platform, organisations who need to collaborate can quickly establish a means of allowing a patient (or their proxy) to share confidential personal information within a private-permissioned trust network. 

This lets hospital dietitians arrange support services from Food Train on the patient's behalf. They will be able to securely share confidential information with Food Train, allowing service provision to be coordinated with the patient's discharge from hospital and an historical record to be kept charting the patient's progress when living at home.

This is achieved through Food Train's 'eat well buddy scheme'. Concerns can be flagged automatically to the NHS if further medical intervention is required. Both the NHS and Food Train digitally sign the data they provide to assure its trustworthiness. 

SICCAR facilitates this by implementing better, more secure, data-sharing protocols which allow the voluntary sector to both utilise and actively contribute relevant data to a citizen's health record. 

Benefits

  • Secure communication around the patient and their needs ensures continuity of care
  • Reduction of food insecurity in the community, leading to a reduction in re-admissions
  • Transparent health records in and out of clinical care settings, only accessible by those who have given or received explicit consent

Download our Case Study Report:

    By enabling the NHS and voluntary sector providers to collaborate better, we can improve the nutritional health of older people while saving two million 'excess' bed-nights each year in UK hospitals. 

    Have a use case which can benefit from SICCAR? Chat with us today, or start a free trial.