Embedding an electronic health record within a health visiting service

County Durham and Darlington's implementation of an electronic health record across community health services provided an ideal opportunity for health visitors to take the lead in enhancing the system to reflect their paper clinical record. Practitioners' concerns, fears and anxieties in relation to confidentiality and professional accountability resulted in the project being further developed to include the employment of three full-time clinical IT facilitators. These were experienced health visitors and 'IT champions' with a sound knowledge of information governance with a specific remit to provide clinical support and supervision to health visitors in electronic clinical record keeping. These practitioners were instrumental in developing the system and proved the key to the project's success and ensuring that the electronic record was embedded into health visiting practice to improve the quality of patient care.