The National Healthlink Project provides a web-based messaging service which allows the secure transmission of clinical patient information between Hospitals, Health Care Agencies and General Practitioners.

Healthlink's core remit is to provide a messaging service that allows patient information to be securely transferred between Hospitals and General Practitioners. Over the years we have expanded the range of messages sent to GPs though Laboratory and Radiology results remain the most popular.

Healthlink in conjunction with the National Cancer Control Program (NCCP) and the GPIT Group have developed electronic referrals from accredited GP practice software systems to the eight specialist cancer centres.

Key points:

• Breast, Prostate and Lung referrals are available for use.
• Forms are based on the NCCP hardcopy form and have been formally approved by the ICGP Quality and Standards Committee.
• Referrals are generated from within the patient file and are delivered to the cancer team who will respond within five working days.
• Acknowledgments are available immediately indicating if the referral has been successfully delivered.
• Responses from the cancer team are integrated with the patient file providing a complete record of the referral/response process.

Although many GPs will have been using Healthlink for years to download labs, the cancer e-referrals are slightly different in that Healthlink need to install a  digital certificate on each machine that referrals will be issued from.