An online burns referral system has been designed and produced by Medical Data Solutions and Services (MDSAS.com) on behalf of NHS England and the burn care Clinical Reference Group. It was piloted in Greater Manchester from May 2017 and proved highly successful. Currently, the system is being rolled out nationally. Referrals are submitted online by the referrer using an NHS Net web link, the only requirement being the need to submit an NHS e-mail address. Clinical photographs and x-ray images can be attached to the electronic referral directly or by using a secure NHS-compliant app SiD (Secure Image Data). A short video of the application is available here:

Use of the system has reduced the number of cases transferred for immediate assessment by over 60%.

The system has also been used to allow patients to upload their own wound or scar images post discharge to allow remote monitoring and management.

From a survey of all burn services and contributors to the iBID in 2015 it was clear that there was a desire to have access to the national dataset to allow flexible queries to be applied to national data.  It was felt the current series of reports provided were too restrictive.

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