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Ambulance responding to emergency call driving fast on street

First Trusts set to launch new system to improve ambulance handovers

St Thomas’ and St Mary’s will be the first Emergency Departments (EDs) in the Capital that will have patient information, both demographics and clinical, automatically sent to them in advance of arriving at ED by ambulance teams (16 December 2024).

This will help to improve the handover process for the benefit of patients and save frontline staff valuable time.

The OneLondon 999 Digital Transfer of Care Programme will better link up Electronic Patient Record (EPR) systems used by London Ambulance Service and the Capital’s 27 EDs to automate the transfer of patient information.

Currently the EPR systems used by London Ambulance Service and the Capital’s EDs only join up together in a limited way. This has meant that manual processes to record key information about patients have been needed during ambulance handovers which can take time and cause delays.

The new system will help ED and ambulance teams provide Londoners with the best possible care more quickly as:

  • key patient information is automatically sent to the receiving Trust as soon as the ambulance clinicians decide to convey the patient to hospital;
  • there is no need for manual data entry helping to eliminate errors or important information not being relayed during handover conversations between the different teams;
  • EDs may be able to proactively plan a patient’s care before their arrival; and
  • ambulance teams will be able to get back on the road sooner to help more Londoners.

We expect St Thomas’ ED to go live early in the new year followed by St Mary’s ED a couple of months later. Learning lessons from these Trusts the London wide rollout of all 27 of the Capital’s EDs is expected to be complete by March 2026.

Katie Hackett, Senior Programme Manager at NHS England (London), said:

“It is great news that St Thomas and St Mary’s Emergency Departments will be launching the new automated system for transferring patient information early in the new year. We have been working with them and London Ambulance Service to ensure it fully meets their needs. We are excited about the improvements to the ambulance handover process we can deliver together over the coming months.”

You can find out more about the OneLondon 999 Digital Transfer of Care Programme here.

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