Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust has gone live with a new health records management and tracking system provided by 6PM, the ICT services and products company.

The system moves the Trust to a location-based filing system which is already proving to be significantly more efficient. It also brings radio frequency identification technology to the premises, which allows records to be automatically tracked as they are transported around the hospital.

Motorola Smart Mobile handheld devices then allow the user to quickly locate an individual record that could be among several hundred in a secretarial office or clinic. Additional enhanced cost savings features with the new system include automated clinical prep along with third party storage and retrieval management.

Just over 3,300 people work for the Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust. Its major site is East Surrey Hospital and also provides a range of services at Crawley, Oxted Health Centre, Dorking, Caterham Dene and Horsham hospitals in partnership with the Primary Care Trusts that own and manage these sites. East Surrey Hospital is the designated hospital for both Gatwick Airport and the M25.

“The new system is not only very easy to use and has been quickly adopted by our team, it is incredibly more efficient than the traditional case notes tracking tools,” head of outpatients and health record services Jackie Brown said.

The implementation of the file-tracking solution will allow the Trust to get the paper under control and make significant cost savings to prepare them for the next stage of their programme which will be an enterprise document management system, 6PM Holdings plc deputy chief executive Steve Wightman said.