Northumberland firm creates 70 jobs with £10m NHS contract

Up to 70 new jobs are being created in Northumberland as part of a project by the area’s NHS trust to digitise millions of patient records.

The contract will see Blyth-based Cleardata UK converting more than 1.2m traditional paper records into digital versions over a three-year period, in line with the NHS digital transformation plan.

The contract also provides a jobs boost for Northumberland, with Cleardata providing full and part-time roles, including opportunities through the Government’s Kick Start Scheme, Traineeship Programme and Sector-Based Work Academies.

Cleardata’s managing director, David Bryce, said: “We were absolutely delighted to win this digitisation project for Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust and look forward to working with them. This is a record contract for Cleardata and I’m so very proud of our business growth and the whole team.

“This is an exciting time for our business and is also fantastic news for our local communities, adding up to 70 new jobs in Northumberland. We were very grateful to receive support from the North of Tyne Growth Fund to support our continued business growth.”

Once scanned, the patient record will be viewed by Northumbria clinicians on an electronic document management solution provided by IMMJ Systems. The system has been specifically built for UK healthcare trusts and clinicians will be able to use SmartIndex™ technology which makes the patient record easy to view and Search.

David Elliott, chief digital information officer at Northumbria Healthcare, said: “It’s important our digital systems meet the needs of clinicians and support them to continually improve patient care.

“Our scanning and digital systems will do this by making vital information. This project is crucial to modernising our services, helping our services interact more seamlessly with one another and reducing margins for error making care even safer.”

Marion Dickson, the trust’s executive director of nursing, added: “Being able to work in an integrated way across services has never been more important and digital patient records are essential to this.

“Given our commitment to supporting our populations beyond their health needs, as we pledged through Our Community Promise earlier this year, it’s also fantastic that this contract will be creating jobs right here in Northumberland and providing a boost to the local economy.”