Client: Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA)
Project: The £6M Greater Manchester DataWell Programme
The Challenge
As part of a landmark £6 million initiative, the Greater Manchester region embarked on an ambitious programme to connect the health and social care records of 3.1 million citizens. The project faced immense technical hurdles and, most critically, deep-seated Information Governance (IG) barriers that made achieving universal buy-in from all NHS Trusts a significant political and operational challenge.
A Founder-Led Solution
Our founder, Jason Ratcliffe, was a senior Integration Consultant responsible for the critical and complex task of connecting the data pipelines. His key contributions included:
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Multi-Agency Integration: He designed the core connectivity patterns and project-managed the integration pipelines between numerous NHS Trusts, GP practices, and Local Authorities that were willing to participate.
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Complex Data Handling: He architected the clinical data feeds from a wide array of disparate systems, handling multiple formats, including HL7 2.x, XML, and JSON.
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Governance Navigation: He was instrumental in successfully navigating the complex I.G. challenges with numerous stakeholders, securing the data-sharing agreements necessary to prove the technical model, even when universal agreement was not possible.
The Outcome
Despite the systemic I.G. challenges, Jason's integration work was a key success within the programme, successfully connecting the records of hundreds of thousands of patients from the participating organisations. This achievement served as a critical proof of concept, demonstrating that a large-scale, integrated health record was technically achievable and directly informing the strategy for the future, more successful Greater Manchester Shared Care Record.