Healthcare staff working in prisons are benefitting from:

• An end to misplaced paper-based records. Healthcare staff now have 24/7 access to prisoners' medical records at multiple locations within a prison.
• Improved continuity of care, with prisoners’ medical records being immediately and securely transferred from one prison to another so they are available for health screening upon reception into the receiving prison.
• User friendly functionality that supports the clinical and administrative tasks common to prisons. This includes specific functionality to support the admittance, transfer and release of prisoners and a wide range of prison-specific clinical templates, care pathways and protocols.
• An end to paper records with illegible handwriting.
• Reduced administrative burdens, e.g. there is now no need to transfer records to other prisons on paper or CDs.
• Improved, reliable and easy access to management information and the ability to audit healthcare activity.
• Improved employee safety, with 'point of consultation' safeguards such as the ability to flag up important information about prisoners (e.g. infections, tendency to use violence etc).
• Improved security, with user access rights tightly controlled, system use automatically recorded and no need to transfer records on paper or CD when prisoners change prisons.
• The availability of a wide range of clinical support information.
• Only needing to get used to one system. This will make user training easier. It will also support more standardised ways of working and ensure that when good practice is identified, it can be communicated quickly and adopted widely.

Find out more about how healthcare staff are benefitting from the introduction of the national clinical IT system in our case study section.

Prisoners are benefitting from:

• A clinical IT system that is supporting efforts to deliver a similar quality and range of healthcare as that available in the wider community.
• Knowledge that the clinicians treating them have access to up-to-date information on their medical histories and current conditions.
• Improved continuity of care as they transfer between prisons, and back into the community.
• Fewer medical errors caused by mislaid records or misinterpreted handwriting.
• Greater security of patient information. For instance, the system is hosted centrally, so there is no need to back information up locally on removable media.