Guardian articles on home dialysis and community records

Guardian Healthcare Professionals Network has recently published two pieces by me, one on home dialysis and the other on shared community electronic health records. The first was based on a recent visit to the dialysis service at Nottingham City Hospital, which is piloting the Quanta SC+ dialysis machine.

The trial is taking place in the ward, but the machine is designed for home dialysis – it is a fraction of the size and weight of most. In the photo below, it’s to the left of Ian Hichens, who usually uses home dialysis but was using the ward so he could play the Sugar Plum Fairy in a panto.Ian Hichens at Nottingham City Hospital using a Quanta SC+ dialysis machine

Currently, only 4.2% of dialysis takes place at home (in England, Wales and NI), although Nottingham manages 8% and there’s a target of 15%. After writing this, Queen of dialysis Maddy Warren tweeted her TEDx talk on why home dialysis should expand. Worth watching to get an idea of the benefits this can have.

I also had an article published on how the Connecting Care partnership (Bristol, South Gloucestershire and North Somerset) and Greater Manchester are linking up health records across the NHS and social care, making community healthcare work that much better.

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