PATIENTS in homes across Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan are receiving thousands of extra visits from health staff due to a new mobile technology.

The PARIS case management system has helped Cardiff and the Vale University Health Board to improve communications, clinical outcomes and absorb additional workload since its activation 10 years ago, with 32,500 clinical casenotes entered into the system each week.

A single electronic file can now be accessed by medical staff via their own remote access devices to find mental health or community patient details, whether treating them at home or in hospital. This has improved the way patient records are kept and updated to provide better care in the local community.

The use of electronic case management systems such as this, coupled with the roll out of 800 netbooks to the community and mental health services teams, has allowed the Cardiff and Vale UHB to increase home visits by 16%.

Mark Cahalane, programme manager at Cardiff and Vale UHB, said more than 10 million case notes had now been written to its PARIS case management system.

"The objective of the mobile project is to ensure effective and secure communication of key clinical events between divisions of the health board.

"Our staff can now visit patients anywhere in the field and both view and update their PARIS held clinical records remotely via their devices.”

1.6m case notes have been created by 172 clinical delivery teams this year alone and this system reduces the admin burden of duplicating these records back at the hospital. This allows staff more contact time with patients and ultimately improves patient care.