professionals will be able to access all the information they need, whenever and wherever required. This access will take place in a secure environment, and the information provided is limited to what any given professional needs to know. The Single Electronic Health Record is built from a number of key components. The Individual Health Record (an electronic “bridge” between GP and urgent care settings), and the Welsh Clinical Portal (a clinical “healthspace” that will allow health professionals to access records, request results and order tests from a variety of sources and labs). These projects will be brought into use incrementally, so developers and clinicians can evaluate and restructure systems when needed. The eventual goal is the development of an integrated approach to health and social care records, although full integration of these records is still in the developmental stage. Informing Healthcare has introduced a code of practice to ensure patients are asked before their information can be viewed by a doctor or nurse outside their GP practice. This ensures patients know only the right healthcare professional is accessing the right information. Informing Healthcare’s security policy been the focus of several positive media reports this year, including a feature by The Guardian, praising its commitment to patient consent and suggesting America can learn from the Welsh approach to computerised health records. Service Improvement Informing Healthcare’s commitment to improving IT systems and to support delivery of the single electronic health record means upgrading, changing, or redesigning several existing systems. For instance, Informing Healthcare is working to deliver new Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS) to all NHS trusts that will improve pathology services across Wales for the benefit of patients and staff. The new system will replace the 13 computer systems currently operating in the 18 main pathology laboratories in Wales. It will reduce the number of duplicated tests and mean that, no matter where a patient receives care, the results of tests will be readily available. To help ease the pressure on radiology departments a new and improved radiology system, called Radis2, is now in the process of being implemented across Wales, and will eventually lead to an All Wales Radiology Management System. Radis2 replaces the existing RADIS, which is over 18 years old. The new system allows for better integration of systems such as PACS (picture archiving and communications system) and digital dictation. It also brings an improved database, making it