Powerful new open-source search technology is being introduced to NHS Wales to make it easier for hospital doctors to find the information they need about their patients.
An advanced new search feature will be added to the next version of the Welsh Clinical Portal (v3.7), which is due to go live this Spring.
The portal is the online service that supports clinicians in their daily work and is used to access patient information, such as medication details, and to request and review test results.
The new search feature will make it easier for doctors to also see discharge letters, theatre notes, referral documents and other clinical letters online, some of which are currently only available in paper format.
Powered by Apache Solr, the search engine used by consumer apps such as Instagram and Netflix, the new functionality will in future make it quicker and simpler to manage the thousands of clinical documents created every day by NHS Wales. This is considered to be the first time Solr has been applied to a health enterprise architecture on a national scale.
Moving more clinical documents online is part of the national approach to an integrated online health record, that makes information available to health care professionals where and when needed.