The NCL Digital Diagnostics programme promotes joined-up health and care records to provide access to important information at the point of care, for the whole care team.

The Imaging Order Communication (ICE) and Clinical Decision Support (CDS) project is part of the wider digital diagnostics programme delivering NCL Digital Diagnostic Programme vision to be the most digitally integrated and intelligent health and care economy across the NHS.

The project will implement an electronic order communication system for radiology requests for GPs and community-based referrers on a single version of the same system across NCL; and allow CDS (Royal College of Radiologists iRefer) to be embedded within the requesting process, ensuring referral appropriateness.

The order communication system and CDS solution will integrate with the existing providers Radiology Information Systems (RIS).

Benefits to be delivered to patients and staff include:

• reduced complexity and faster requesting process
• more patient choice as to where examinations can be performed
• faster report turnaround times
• more appropriate examination requests

The programme involves the selection and implementation of an electronic ordering software that seamlessly integrated with MedCurrent iRefer CDS application.

The Clinisys ICE solution will provide a mechanism for primary care requestors to connect into a single ICE system to request radiology diagnostic services and at the point of the request determine which service provider the referral will go to.

The request will then be automatically routed to the appropriate diagnostic service provider on completion of the request in ICE. As the request will be made by primary care, the order details will be written back into the patient record within the GP clinical system that launched ICE. The order in ICE can be updated to reflect the status of the request in the RIS. This can be accessed from the GP clinical systems when ICE is launched within the context of the patient record. When the study is completed and reported by the diagnostic service, these results will be in the patient record in ICE and will also be sent to primary care electronically from ICE.