Our new electronic health record ‘Alex Health’ is went live 2-3 November. The Patient Portal ‘My Alex Health’ is being rolled out in a staged approach.
Click here for information on the patient portal
Briefing document:
PAHT – MAH Primary Care briefing (10 July 2025) (328kB pdf)
Printable documents:
Printable guidance to come
Digital screens:
Now live: (update: 21 July): We have now launched the new ‘GP reporting loop’ for Alex Health queries.
The GP reporting loop allows GPs and Primary care colleagues to alert our IT teams to concerns or problems regarding Alex Health at PAHT. This will be a unified, single port of call for primary care by raising a ticket with our Service Desk.
GP issues with AlexHealth : PAH ICT Service Desk
Please note: This is ONLY for Alex Health concerns or problems. For all other issues, please continue to use the standardised approach.
Now that the GP reporting loop is live, Primary Care colleagues have access to raise a ticket about an issue, where they will be managed in accordance with the Fresh Desk SLA and receive feedback and various statistics as required.
Please see the below Quick Reference Guide on how to use the Service desk (Fresh framework) and how to raise a ticket.
Quick Reference Guide – GP reporting loop for Alex Health issues (293kB png)
Latest Newsletter
Alex Health Newsletter for Primary Care colleagues (June 2025) (160kB pdf)
Previous Newsletters
Alex Health Newsletter for Primary Care colleagues (May 2025) (230kB pdf)
Alex Health Newsletter for Primary Care colleagues (25 March 2025) (310kB pdf)
Alex Health Newsletter for Primary Care colleagues (27 February 2025) (160kB pdf)
What will Alex Health mean for GPs?
- No multiple discharge letters: The discharge summary and medications list will all be in one document in Alex Health rather than two separate documents going through at different times.
- Ordering diagnostic testing stays the same: You will continue to use ICE for radiology and pathology diagnostic testing and Swiftqueue for phlebotomy appointments.
- Business as usual: The current processes for radiology and pathology, and phlebotomy services stay the same. No other processes are likely to change.
What you can do?
- Share information about Alex Health and go-live in your surgeries and patient newsletters
- Be mindful of reduced services during period when referring patients
How will it affect processes?
- Seamless integration of real-time data
- Alex Health will be used by PAHT clinicians to raise orders and receive results for radiology or pathology services.
- Results will be available within Alex Health and the Shared Care Record (HIE).
The different system and internal processes used within PAHT will integrate seamlessly and require no change to GP practice.
What is an electronic health record?
An electronic health record(EHR) is an integrated digital record of a patient’s care, drawing together information from all systems that store that patient’s data. It helps facilitate easy access to this clinical data, which includes the Shared Care Record.
An EHR also streamlines many of the cumbersome administrative activities associated with patient care, including patient appointment scheduling.
Why do we need the Alex Health EHR system now?
Currently, our patient data is stored on numerous systems which need to be accessed separately. This makes us less efficient and doesn’t provide us with a ‘single source of the truth’.
It also means numerous different logins are required. Instead, Alex Health will provide one front door to everything (just one single login) ensuring quick and safe access to all available patient information.
More broadly, Alex Health is a key part of the patient-driven transformation agendas in PAHT 2030 and the Trust’s digital strategy. And it will also deliver on the NHS Long Term Plan’s expectation that all services should have met ‘a level of core digitalisation by 2024’. As Alex Health is cloud-based, it will reduce our ICT footprint in the new hospital and reduce downtime when we transition to our new site.
What is the main benefit of the Alex Health system?
Alex Health will simplify health care delivery and administration across the Trust. It will improve patient safety and health outcomes by giving clinicians easy access to a patient’s full medical history and enhance health information sharing amongst integrated care partners such as GPs and social services.
Additionally, introducing this advanced technology will streamline patient administration for care professionals, and support the development of new medicines and treatments. It will enable us to move away from the use of a large number of information and paper based patient record systems that currently don’t talk to each other.
Alex Health will hold information about all patients in the hospital, so it will give us an overview of the hospital as a whole. Using the information held, we will be able to see how many patients are in the hospital, where we have empty beds and also when we are expecting to discharge patients. This means that we will be able to manage the flow of patients through the hospital better and plan ahead.
In addition to this, the system will help us with reporting (internally and also to external bodies) as well as supporting our audit work.
When will patients start to benefit from Alex Health?
From the go-live date in Autumn 2024. Between now and then PAHT will maintain and support current paper and digital systems and will continue to do so until Alex Health is ready for switchover. This ensures PAHT staff can access current patient records without interruption to the delivery of quality care. Patients will receive communications explaining how and when Alex Health will be rolled out, and what it will mean for them.
How will health care providers outside of PAHT be able to view patient records?
Information on Alex Health will be pulled from the Herts and West Essex Shared Care Record which other hospitals, GPs, Out of Hours, Mental Health, Social Care, Community, and other healthcare providers all have access to.
Who will be able to see the Alex Health system?
At present, only those directly involved in the care of a patient need to access their care record. This will not change with our new system.
Staff who need to access records will be assigned a secure access method which uniquely identifies them. Their details will be recorded for every action that is taken on the system and this will be regularly audited.
GPs – ‘Health Information Exchange’ allows GPs to view some relevant information about their own patients and trust clinicians will be able to access GP records. The Alex Health system will also be used to send discharge summaries and any other records of care/test results to local GPs and others outside the Trust involved in a patient’s care (such as a district nurse).
The records of patients attending a Genito-Urinary Medicine Sexual Health department will remain entirely separate.
Will it reduce tests/wasting time with duplicate requesting?
The system allows clinicians to order tests electronically, which should speed up the process. It allows clinicians to see what has already been ordered and resulted in some cases it also alerts clinicians if the same test is ordered several times in a short period of time, and asks them to justify the need for this where appropriate. There will also be best-practice ‘order sets’ for different clinicians which will support appropriate testing. These ‘order sets’ bring together the most commonly requested tests into a ‘bundle’ so that they can be ordered more efficiently.
Why is keeping accurate patient records important?
Keeping accurate records is a legal requirement and also part of the professional code of health care professionals. In making an accurate record of care we ensure that patients receive safe, high-quality care and we provide colleagues with the information they need to make good decisions, in real-time.
Should anything happen to a patient that results in further enquiry or investigation (serious incident, coroners court case etc), the record will be used as evidence. This is why it is important to have a timely record of care. This principle remains the same regardless of whether records are electronic or paper-based, and this doesn’t apply to just clinical information but also administrative details (appointment times etc).
Alex Health allows us to have information in real time – the moment it is added, everyone who needs to see it will be able to. This will help both clinical and non-clinical staff to do their work more efficiently and also help with things like bed management, reporting and audits.
What information will be on the EHR?
The record will include important information which may include:
- Clinical information
- Medical history
- Medications
- Current prescriptions
- Allergies
- Laboratory test results
- Clinician & logistics information
- Clinicians involved in the delivery of care
- Surgical and anaesthetic records
- A record of each episode of care
- Dates of admission and expected date of discharge
- Location of care (ward / bed / clinic etc)
- Appointment times
- Nursing care information
- Observations records
- Care plans
- Some assessments
- Personal information
- Name
- Date of birth
- Address
- Contact phone number
- Next of kin contact details
- Specific services may also store other information relevant to patient care
Will there be any resources that we can share with our patients?
There are a number of resources that we have provided on this page in the ‘Downloadable content for communications’, including downloadable digital screens for waiting rooms.
We will be adding more resources, including social media graphics and digital screens for waiting rooms.
If there is any other resources that you think would be useful for your patients, please email: [email protected]
For feedback and questions
If you have any feedback or questions, please email: [email protected]