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CCG IT
CCGs are starting to use IT to meet their goals and ambitions. Fiona Barr reports on their progress
GPs are already the most advanced users of IT in the medical world but that is about to step up another notch as clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) use information technology to help achieve their goals.
Names such as iTracker, Audit+ or Patients Know Best may not be familiar to GPs but they are the sort of tools CCGs are deploying alongside traditional GP systems.
Dr Peter Rudge, chairman of Sentinel Healthcare CCG in Plymouth, Devon, says Sentinel, which covers 275,000 patients, plans to make maximum use of IT. ? believe that we are light years off the pace on IT,' he adds.
Sentinel has at least eight separate IT projects running at the moment (see box below). They include using Choose and Book for all referrals which are sent to its clinical assessment service (CAS).
Dr Rudge says the CAS identifies real demand, 'demand we all agree can currently only be met in a hospital', from failure demand, 'demand currently being met in the hospital that could be met somewhere else'.
Map of Medicine
Sentinel is also making use of the Map of Medicine decision support tool. Dr Rudge adds: 1We are using the Map of Medicine tool to agree as a clinical community how the real demand will be met between primary and secondary care - that is defining the...