A pioneering cloud computing program, under development for 18 months, will now be tested at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London, where patients will use the Cloud to take control of their health information.
The cloud platform, developed by Scottish cloud software and services provider Flexiant is designed to overcome issues seen with electronic health records programs tested and used so far.
When the project starts next month it will be the first large-scale trial of its type.
Edinburgh Napier University is also working with the hospital and Flexiant on the project, helping with moves from e-health to the next-generation platform.
Edinburgh Napier University Professor Bill Buchanan said the E-Health Cloud platform will help overcome the divide of information shared between GP, hospital and assisted living.
"Our system allows for data to be stored with its context, such as where it was captured, and then used in whatever way is necessary through well-managed clinical services," Buchanan said.
"Security is integrated into every single transaction, and we host it on Flexiant’s cloud, to give us a scalable and robust e-health infrastructure."
Those running the trial said the solution could one day be used across all areas of healthcare treatment, including primary and secondary healthcare.
By hosting data in the cloud healthcare professionals can have a real-time repository of information.
The project at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital will allow patients to choose who can view their patient records, from GP to consultants and family members and carers.
The solution can also be used for patient diagnostics, showing body temperature and blood pressure, allowing for the research into different patient illnesses offering a "risk assessment score or early warning score" for early identification of symptoms.
The solution goes beyond the hospital computers and can also be displayed on mobile devices, with encryption written into the system as well as governance policies that control how much information each person can obtain.
