Here at Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust, we are passionate about continuing to improve and revolutionise the way we use clinical data to improve patient outcomes and our services.
We have implemented a new system called Clinical Record Interactive Search (CRIS), this is an innovative research solution that allows us to safely and securely retrieve data from a Trust’s Electronic Medical Record system and de-identifies it to protect patient identities and then loads it in to a secure database. This will allow us to carry out research for the benefits of patients and society, including clinical audits and service evaluation using information from the Trust’s clinical records.
As well as being valuable in helping with your personal clinical care, the information stored in patient records can be used to help us understand more about the causes of physical and mental illnesses and how best to treat them.
This is because they allow us to look at large numbers of people in real life situations.
This research platform is used by 11 other NHS Mental Health Trusts across the UK to enable research where the results are applicable UK wide. So far we have worked collaboratively with other research Trusts and within the Trust we have also aided pharmacy audits, developed a service evaluation for the Early Intervention in Psychosis (EIP) team, and are working with a service user to develop a research project.
If you would like to find out more about the CRIS Network you can find out here: CRIS Network
If you are happy for your clinical records to be de-identified and included in CRIS you do not need to do anything now. If at any point in the future, you would prefer your de-identified notes to not be included, you can do so by contacting the CRIS Administrator:
Email: cris@southernhealth.nhs.uk
Telephone: 023 8047 5826
CRIS removes or hides any information that can identify you. This is called de-identification. Your name, the name of your carer, your full date of birth, address, postcode and phone numbers is replaced with ‘ZZZZZ’ or truncated to remove chance of identification. This is how the de-identified information would appear:
January 6 2016 ZZZZZ ZZZZZ ZZZZZ ZZZZZ ZZZZZ Dear ZZZZZ Re: Mindfulness Group I am writing to confirm that the next Mindfulness Group will commence on Monday 3 February 2019 for 10 weeks.
If you would like to find out more about CRIS or about taking part in research studies relevant to your health in the Trust, please do contact the CRIS administrator: cris@southernhealth.nhs.uk