Sherwood Forest NHS Trust

Clive Pickles

Director of Medical Development within the Trust

He graduated from Manchester University Medical School in 1976 and became a Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist at King's Mill Centre in 1989.

Clive is Vice-Chair of the National Path.Finder Consortium.

Email: clive.pickles@sfh-tr.nhs.uk

 Liz Close

Path.Finder Admin Assistant.

Email: elizabeth.close@sfh-tr.nhs.uk

Path.Finder Development in Kings Mill

King's Mill Centre for Health Care Services provides care for a population of 250,000 people, and offers a comprehensive range of services. It is situated in the heart of 'Robin Hood country'. The Centre has 570 beds, 5 intensive care beds and 11 operating theatres.

The Path.Finder project was launched at King's Mill in 1997. The system, using Voyager software, was established in six GP practices, on a pilot basis for two years. An evaluation of this pilot demonstrated that the contents were found to be beneficial to the primary care management of patients, and their referral to secondary care. However technological issues such as the access through a single stand-alone PC and the need for manual updates of the system via disc limited the potential benefits of Path. Finder to these six practices.

In March 1998 the Path.Finder project at King's Mill entered a new phase. North Nottinghamshire Health Authority secured an agreement with BT health to upgrade the computer hardware and electronically link all GP practices within the authority boundary. This provided KMC with an avenue to disseminate the Path.Finder system more widely.

A software company was engaged to design a web based information system, which matched the hospital's specifications. We then began the long process of converting all the information from the existing Path.Finder system onto the new one. In August 2000 a pilot of the new site was launched in secondary care. It is anticipated that following a positive evaluation of the pilot, the system will be launched throughout Primary and Secondary care in Central Nottinghamshire.

The present system contains; Clinical Guidelines for both primary and secondary care, hospital publications, links to medical databases - including eBNF, teaching and training material and events, telephone directories, contract monitoring information and patient information.