Northgate-is - News Item 815

Guernsey’s new partnership to promote public health and social well-being

NEWS RELEASE
21st August 2008

Guernsey’s new partnership to promote public health and social well-being

Northgate Information Solutions, a leading provider of innovative services and software to the public sector and utilities markets, today announces an innovative partnership with the States of Guernsey to assist in the drive to promote, protect and improve public health and social well-being of the people of the Island.

Guernsey’s Health and Social Services Department is set to introduce state-of-the art technology joining together disparate data held by the Office of Environmental Health and Pollution Regulation.  It will also introduce a system to support the regulation of all potentially polluting activities within Guernsey.

The innovative service will assist the Island’s environmental health officers in providing efficient and effective public health services to Guernsey’s citizens through:

• maintaining an up-to-date and complete record of public health complaints made by individuals, ensuring that officers have full information about previous complaints prior to visits or taking action;
• providing a single source of information for environmental officers on all environmental health matters including public health nuisances, food control, pest control, waste control, seawater and shellfish testing, and tattooing and piercing;
• extending the flexibility of current information systems to take account of recent enactments including the Environmental Pollution (Guernsey) Law, 2004 and planning for future ones;
• eradicating unnecessary manual processes and radically improving the management information system as a means of enhancing business processes and services to the public.

John Cook, Director of Environmental Health and Pollution Regulation said today: “We are delighted to be working with Northgate to provide public health services which meet the needs of today and the challenges for the future. We are constantly seeking to improve our services as well as responding to the rising costs of quality health and social care. The new environmental health service will cut down bureaucracy and save valuable officer time enabling them to focus on their core tasks of promoting, protecting and improving public health.“

Russell Osborne, Managing Director of Land & Property for Northgate Public Services, added: “Effective information management is essential to building trusted public health services which place people at their heart. We are committed to promoting the intelligent use of information to support healthcare improvement and social well being and are proud to be working in partnership with the Island’s government to support their public health services, at a time when the challenges have never been greater.”

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