CMS: Clinical Management System
Connect the information,
people and decisions around care.
Referral → CareInsight
A Microsoft-based care service management environment for coordinating referrals, assessments, care planning, safeguarding workflow, incidents, capacity and operational insight around the people your service supports.
CMS coordinates the service. Specialist clinical systems keep their clinical authority.
In short
One care journey, coordinated in one operating environment.
A single care journey may involve referral, triage, assessment, admission, care information, planning, incidents, safeguarding, capacity, family communication, staff actions, reviews, discharge and reporting. CMS connects them so the service can see itself while it is still running.
What the service can then answer
- Who has been referred
- What has been assessed
- What care was agreed
- Who owns the next action
- What concerns are open
- What incidents have happened
- What the service can currently support
- What families have been told
- What is outstanding
- What the service is learning
Typically relevant to
- Hospices
- Care providers
- Community care services
- Specialist care services
- Charity and non-profit care services
- Public-sector care services
This is not a reflection on care and clinical staff. It is a consequence of fragmentation.
The boundary, stated early
CMS coordinates the service. It does not claim the clinical authority of specialist systems.
CMS coordinates the service-specific information and workflow required to manage care. Specialist clinical systems remain where they provide the authoritative clinical capability, and what CMS is authoritative for is agreed during qualification.
Strong CMS fit
Where the main problem is coordinating:
- Referrals and intake
- Assessment
- Care and service information
- Plans and actions
- Safeguarding workflow
- Incidents
- Risk
- Capacity
- Family and representative communication
- Review
- Operational reporting
Requires deeper qualification
Possible, but not assumed. Each of these needs clinical, technical and assurance qualification before anyone commits:
- Medication administration
- Electronic prescribing
- Complex clinical observations
- Diagnostic decision support
- Treatment recommendations
- Connected medical devices
- Complex cross-organisation clinical records
- National healthcare integrations
- Large historic clinical migration
- Specialist clinical coding
- Direct patient or family access to sensitive information
- Highly specialised clinical workflows
Another specialist platform may be more appropriate
Where the requirement is fundamentally:
- A full hospital electronic patient record
- Specialist prescribing
- Diagnostic technology
- A specialist clinical system
- A financial or ERP platform
- Another regulated technology category outside the qualified CMS scope
This is a guide, not a product limitation table. Qualification determines actual fit, and CMS can still coordinate the service around a specialist system that keeps the clinical capability.
Fragmented information creates risk and administration.
None of this appears as a line in a budget, but it shapes how much time the service spends on administration rather than care.
Referral delays
Important information may need to be chased before a decision can be made.
Duplicate entry
The same information can be recorded several times in different places.
Incomplete context
Staff may need to search across systems to understand the person or situation.
Safeguarding visibility
Important concerns can become disconnected from the wider care record.
Incident follow-up
Actions and learning may be harder to track across teams.
Capacity blindness
Leadership may struggle to see service pressure and available resource clearly.
Family communication
Updates can depend too heavily on individual staff and manual communication.
Reporting burden
Management information may need to be reconstructed after the work has already happened.
The CMS model
One connected journey around the person and the service.
CMS creates a structured operating model around the person while keeping the referral, assessment, plan, risks, safeguarding concerns, incidents, professionals and actions connected to it.
Refer
Capture the referral consistently.
Assess
Understand need, risk, eligibility and readiness for the service.
Plan
Coordinate agreed care, clinical or support requirements.
Deliver
Keep the relevant information, actions and responsibilities connected to the person.
Monitor
Track incidents, safeguarding, changes, actions and service status.
Review
Understand progress, changing need and next decisions.
Learn
Use operational information to improve quality, capacity and leadership visibility.
Person-centred record
Bring the relevant context together around the person.
CMS holds the information the service needs to coordinate care. It is not a claim to a complete medical record or a single source of truth for all healthcare data, and access always remains role appropriate.
- Personal details
- Referral
- Assessment
- Care information
- Care plan
- Risk
- Safeguarding
- Incidents
- Documents
- Family and representatives
- Professional contacts
- Interactions
- Reviews
- Actions
- Service history
Detailed service qualification
Structure where it helps, judgement where it matters.
Open the areas relevant to your service. Capability is configured around the care model rather than switched on wholesale.
- Referral source and reason for referral
- Contact details and current circumstances
- Care or clinical information supplied with the referral
- Supporting documents
- Urgency and initial risk
- Eligibility information and missing information
- Referral status, communication and triage
The system supports the process. Appropriately qualified people remain responsible for professional, clinical and safeguarding decisions.
Capacity
See capacity alongside the service conditions that shape it.
Availability is a number. What a service can safely support is a professional judgement, and CMS does not make it.
Understand operational capacity in context.
- Available capacity
- Occupied capacity
- Reserved or planned
- Beds where relevant
- Rooms where relevant
- Service type
- Location
- Planned admissions
- Expected discharge
- Waiting demand
Not every service uses beds. Terminology and the capacity model are configured to how the organisation actually operates.
Availability alone does not determine safe capacity.
Safe operational decisions may also depend on:
- The needs being supported
- Staffing
- Competency and skill mix
- Service rules and admission criteria
- Care or clinical dependency
- Resource availability
- Other organisation-specific factors
Where those factors are not modelled in the qualified scope, CMS shows availability and context rather than a safe-capacity verdict. Final admission, placement and service-capacity decisions remain with accountable professionals.
Care rarely sits with one role.
CMS helps the service understand who is involved, what they need to do and how their activity connects to the person.
- Care staff
- Clinical staff
- Managers
- Social workers
- GP and healthcare professionals
- Therapists
- Safeguarding leads
- External providers
- Commissioners
- Family and representatives
Communication
Keep important communication connected to the care journey.
Communication with families and representatives is part of the record rather than something held in individual inboxes. Any access or sharing is defined with the organisation against its lawful basis, governance and policies.
- Primary contact
- Family or representative
- Consent and preferences
- Contact history
- Updates
- Meeting notes
- Documents
- Concerns
- Follow-up actions
From person to service
See what is happening across the service.
CMS is designed to make questions such as these easier to answer from the work itself, rather than from a manual collation exercise.
How many referrals are waiting?
Where are assessments delayed?
What is current capacity?
Where are safeguarding concerns open?
Where are incidents increasing?
What actions are overdue?
Which services are under pressure?
What admissions are planned?
What discharges are expected?
Where is demand increasing?
What information is incomplete?
Reporting themes
- Referral demand
- Assessment status
- Admission activity
- Capacity
- Care activity
- Incidents
- Safeguarding
- Actions
- Service utilisation
- Quality indicators where defined
- Family communication
- Outcomes where captured
Power BI is applied where richer analysis is required. Regulatory returns are only automated where they have been specifically built and approved.
Better service decisions depend on information people can trust.
If staff need to reconstruct the story from documents, inboxes and separate systems, the service will always be harder to understand.
Data
Information designed to be used.
Structured information
Captured once, in the workflow, in a defined shape.
Consistent definitions
The same terms mean the same thing across teams and services.
Role-based access
People see the information their responsibility requires.
Data ownership
Someone is accountable for each part of the record.
Auditability
Changes and decisions can be explained afterwards.
Operational reporting
Reporting comes from the work rather than a separate exercise.
Clinical safety and assurance
Assurance depends on where CMS will operate.
We do not claim blanket compliance with any named clinical-safety, data-security or assurance standard. Applicable clinical-safety requirements are confirmed during solution qualification.
Applicability depends on
- Intended use
- The care setting
- Whether functionality can affect patient or service-user safety
- The organisations using the system
- The systems CMS integrates with
- NHS or non-NHS deployment context
Where applicable, qualification considers
- Clinical safety ownership
- Clinical hazards
- Risk controls
- Change and release impact
- Clinical safety documentation
- Clinical safety review
- Deployment responsibilities
- Residual risk
- Post-go-live monitoring
Regulatory classification
Medical-device classification depends on intended purpose and implemented functionality, so we make no unconditional claim in either direction. CMS is designed primarily for care-service workflow, coordination and information management. Any functionality that could affect regulatory classification is assessed against its intended purpose and applicable medical-device guidance. Diagnostic, prescribing and autonomous clinical decision functions are not assumed CMS capability, and no regulatory marking is claimed here.
Information governance
Clinical and care information needs clear responsibility.
These are answered with the organisation during design rather than assumed. Information-sharing and access requirements are defined against its lawful basis, governance, policies and service responsibilities.
Qualification considers, where applicable
- Who owns each information domain
- Who may view information
- Who may change it
- Restricted and sensitive information
- Audit requirements
- Record retention
- Information sharing
- Access by external organisations
- Family and representative access
- Lawful sharing authority and consent where applicable
- Document ownership
- Change history
- Data quality
- Record closure and archive
- Subject access processes managed by the organisation
- Emergency or exceptional access where legitimately required
We do not provide legal advice, and consent is not assumed to be the lawful basis for processing health or care information. Nor does the presence of a feature make an organisation compliant with any regulation or regulator standard.
Auditability
Activity across the record can be captured so the service can explain its own decisions later.
- Referral
- Assessment
- Plan
- Status change
- Incident
- Safeguarding action
- Capacity change
- Communication
- Review
- Closure
Role-based access
People should see what their role requires.
Roles are designed around responsibility. Exact permissions are defined with the organisation rather than assumed here.
Sees the person, the plan and the actions due today without searching across systems.
Data migration and legacy continuity
Do not migrate history simply because it exists.
Decide what the future service needs to operate safely, lawfully and effectively. Historic information may remain in an appropriately governed legacy or archive environment where that is safer or more proportionate than full migration.
Potential active operational migration
- People currently receiving support
- Active referrals
- Current assessments
- Current plans
- Active risks
- Open safeguarding records
- Open incidents
- Current professional and family contacts
- Active tasks and actions
- Relevant current documents
- Operational reference data
Retained or selectively migrated history
Where full migration is not proportionate, history can stay accessible in a governed legacy or archive environment, with the future service holding only what it needs to operate. Retention periods are the organisation's decision and are not assumed here.
Requires deeper qualification
- Large longitudinal histories
- Multiple clinical systems
- Poor-quality source data
- Inconsistent identifiers
- Unstructured documents
- Unclear provenance
- Unresolved duplicate records
- Complex retention requirements
- Large audit histories
InteliSense may provide
- Migration structure
- Mapping approach
- Tooling
- Execution
- Validation support
The organisation remains responsible for
- Clinical and business meaning
- Source knowledge
- Cleansing decisions
- Retention decisions
- Clinical and service validation
- Sign-off
Integration and interoperability
Decide the fate of each system before connecting it.
Before integrating an existing system, we assess whether it should be retained and integrated, replaced with existing Microsoft capability, consolidated, retired or deferred.
- Retained and integrated
- Replaced with existing Microsoft capability
- Consolidated
- Retired
- Deferred
Where integration is required, we qualify
- Authoritative system
- Data ownership
- Direction
- Timing and frequency
- Identifiers
- Security
- Error handling
- Reconciliation
- Monitoring
- Support ownership
- Resilience
- Testing
Potential systems
- Existing care systems
- Clinical systems
- Referral systems
- Identity
- Microsoft 365
- Workforce
- Finance
- Commissioners
- Document services
- Data platforms
- Other specialist systems
We claim no support for FHIR, HL7, NHS APIs, GP Connect, NHS Login, Spine, medical-device integration or any other named national interoperability standard. Where those are required, interoperability requirements are qualified during architecture.
Service continuity and resilience
Care still has to operate when technology is unavailable.
Continuity is a design conversation, not an afterthought. We publish no uptime percentage, recovery objective, disaster-recovery claim or support service level here; where approved service levels apply, they are agreed contractually.
- Business continuity
- Downtime process
- Critical information access
- Integration failure
- Operational escalation
- Backup
- Recovery
- Restoration
- User communication
- Support ownership
- Change and release controls
The foundation
Built on the Microsoft ecosystem.
The value is the operating model. The platform matters because it gives the service workflow, structured data, automation, reporting and integration in an environment teams already use.
Dynamics 365 and Power Platform
Workflow, structured records and configurable process around the care journey.
Dataverse
A governed place for service information, with role-based access and auditability.
Power Automate
Automation of routine steps such as notifications, tasks and status changes.
Power BI
Operational and leadership reporting drawn from the same structured information.
Microsoft 365
Familiar collaboration, email and document handling alongside the service record.
Azure services
Applied where integration, security or scale requires them, not by default.
AI with purpose
Reduce administration. Keep accountability human.
AI is applied to the administrative weight around the record. If AI functionality could materially influence clinical decisions, it requires separate clinical-safety and potentially regulatory assessment.
Where AI can help
Summarising record history
Finding relevant information
Drafting routine communication
Highlighting missing information
Summarising incidents
Supporting handovers
Identifying overdue actions
Supporting reporting
Knowledge retrieval
Surfacing patterns for human review
What AI does not do
- Diagnosis
- Treatment recommendations
- Prescribing
- Autonomous triage
- Autonomous safeguarding decisions
- Autonomous admission or discharge
- Autonomous clinical risk scoring
CMS fit assessment
Answer a few questions and get a likely direction.
Service-level questions only. Please do not include patient, service-user or safeguarding case information. The result is indicative and is never a clinical, regulatory or clinical-safety determination.
Indicative signal
Answer the questions and we will show a likely direction. This is indicative rather than a clinical, regulatory or clinical-safety determination, and CMS is not always the right answer. Please keep every answer at service level: do not include patient, service-user or safeguarding case information.
Your answers are carried through, so you will not be asked to repeat them. Final qualification is always a conversation.
Routes
CMS is one answer. It is not always the right one.
The starting point depends on what is actually true today rather than on which solution we would prefer to sell. Replacement is not assumed.
Transform
Where the future care-service operating model is still unclear and needs defining before any solution is selected.
Explore TransformRecover
Where an existing Microsoft or care implementation is unstable, poorly adopted, over budget, badly integrated, untrusted or failing operationally.
Explore RecoverOptimise
Where the platform is live and broadly stable but process, automation, reporting, data quality, integration, adoption, performance, capacity visibility or AI need to improve.
Explore OptimiseCRMS
Where the operating problem is crisis, resilience and community-support coordination rather than care and clinical-service management.
Explore CRMS
How delivery is controlled
Start with the care journey, not the software.
Every service is different, so this describes the discipline rather than a fixed duration. Cutover is a controlled transition, and not every CMS deployment requires a single large switch-over.
Understand
Map referrals, assessments, care workflows, information and decisions.
Design
Define the future operating process and information model.
Validate
Use representative cases and scenarios with the people who perform the work.
Build
Configure the agreed CMS capability.
Prove
Test workflows, access, records, reporting and critical service scenarios.
Cutover
Production transition, data, access, integration, communication, service readiness and support.
Stabilise
Settle the first release and resolve what real use exposes.
Adopt
Prepare users, managers and administrators.
Improve
Use service experience and information to refine the operating model.
Confidence gates
Delivery continues at pace only while the conditions for safe delivery remain true.
Four business decision points, owned jointly. They exist to protect the service and the people it supports, not to generate project paperwork.
Gate 1
Before design
Fit and safety boundary
Confirm the service problem and the care and clinical boundary are understood well enough to justify designing a solution.
Confirmed at this gate
- Service problem
- Intended users
- Care and clinical scope
- What CMS is authoritative for
- Specialist systems that remain
- High-impact decisions
- Regulatory and clinical-safety considerations
- Major integrations
- Data boundaries
Decision
Proceed · Narrow the scope · Specialist solution · Transform first
Gate 2
Before build
Design and assurance readiness
Confirm the organisation can support what is about to be built, and that assurance is settled rather than assumed.
Confirmed at this gate
- Future workflow
- Roles
- Information model
- Access
- Safeguarding
- Data ownership
- Migration
- Integration
- Reporting
- Service continuity
- Clinical safety where applicable
- Customer participation
- Governance
Decision
Proceed · Resolve readiness · Re-scope · Pause
Gate 3
Before go-live planning
Prove
Confirm the service works end to end against representative scenarios, within the qualified scope.
Confirmed at this gate
- Referral
- Assessment
- Care planning
- Safeguarding
- Incidents
- Capacity
- Family and representative communication
- Security
- Data migration
- Integrations
- Reporting
- Downtime and continuity
- User readiness
Decision
Proceed · Remediate · Re-test · Re-plan
Gate 4
Before go-live
Go-live
A shared business decision on whether the service is ready to run in CMS, taken by the people accountable for care.
Confirmed at this gate
- Production readiness
- Users and access
- Migration position
- Integrations
- Critical workflows
- Safeguarding processes
- Support
- Operational continuity
- Training
- Ownership
- Residual risks
Decision
Go · No-go · Controlled deferral
Shared responsibility
InteliSense can provide method, architecture and delivery. The organisation remains accountable for its care, clinical, safeguarding and governance decisions.
Not every organisation carries every job title below. What matters is that each responsibility has an owner before delivery depends on it.
Executive or service sponsor
Owns the outcome and resolves organisational decisions.
Care or clinical lead
Owns professional workflow and care-safety decisions.
Safeguarding lead
Owns safeguarding policy and escalation requirements.
Information governance or data protection owner
Owns organisational information-governance decisions.
Data owner
Understands source records, data meaning and validation.
IT and security owner
Owns identity, environments, security and connected technology dependencies.
Process and service owners
Make the workflow decisions.
Front-line users
Validate the service against real operating scenarios.
Clinical safety ownership
Where applicable, appropriate clinical-safety responsibility is identified during qualification.
Illustrative example
A person is referred to the service.
This example is illustrative. It describes how the operating model works rather than a specific customer engagement.
Step 1
Refer
Referral and supporting information are captured.
Step 2
Assess
The relevant professional reviews needs, risks and suitability.
Step 3
Decide
The service records the appropriate professional decision.
Step 4
Plan
Required care, actions and responsibilities are established.
Step 5
Deliver
Staff coordinate activity around the person.
Step 6
Monitor
Incidents, safeguarding, changes and actions remain visible.
Step 7
Review
The care and service position is reviewed.
Step 8
Learn
Operational information supports leadership and improvement.
Clear boundaries matter.
CMS is not a replacement for professional judgement.
CMS is not an autonomous clinical decision-maker.
CMS is not a diagnostic system.
CMS is not an electronic prescribing system unless specifically implemented.
CMS is not an electronic medication administration record unless specifically implemented.
CMS is not a complete hospital electronic patient record.
CMS is not a full longitudinal medical record.
CMS is not a replacement for every specialist healthcare system.
CMS is not a reason to move every historic clinical record into one database.
The purpose is to connect the service information and workflows that need to work together around the person.
Before a proposal is committed
What commercial qualification has to understand.
We publish no fixed fees, project durations, user caps, site caps, bed caps or integration caps. Scope and commercial arrangement follow qualification.
- Service scope
- Workflows
- Clinical and care boundaries
- Users
- Roles
- Safeguarding
- Data
- Migration
- Integration
- Environments
- Reporting
- Assurance
- Customer responsibilities
- Deployment
- Support
- Dependencies
What happens after go-live
The first release is where operational learning starts.
Improvement is based on what the service actually experiences. None of it is an automatic commitment, and expansion should be justified by evidence rather than assumed.
Stabilise
Settle the first release with the service running.
Support
Resolve issues with clear ownership.
Adopt
Embed the operating model in daily practice.
Optimise
Improve process, data quality, reporting and automation.
Expand
Extend where the evidence justifies it, not automatically.
Where later value usually comes from
- Process refinement
- Additional service teams
- Reporting
- Automation
- Integration
- Data improvement
- Capacity management
- Family communication
- New workflows
- AI administration support
Evidence
Customer experience of working with InteliSense.
These videos are customers describing what it is like to work with InteliSense on Microsoft business applications. They are general delivery evidence. None of them proves a CMS implementation, clinical management, care planning, safeguarding, incident management, capacity management or any clinical outcome.
Customer voice
What customers say about working with us.
Membership organisation
British Society of Lifestyle Medicine
Implementing D365 for the British Society of Lifestyle Medicine
How we work
Care technology needs clarity before configuration.
Understand the service
We start with how care is actually delivered, not with a product demonstration.
Map the decisions
Referral, assessment, safeguarding and review decisions define the workflow.
Connect the information
The record, the actions and the reporting come from the same structure.
Involve users early
Care and clinical staff test the design with real scenarios before it is built.
Make responsibility visible
Ownership, escalation and review are designed in rather than assumed.
Use standard capability where it fits
Standard Microsoft capability first; configuration where the service genuinely differs.
Prove with real scenarios
Critical service situations are tested end to end, including access and reporting.
Improve after go-live
Operational information is used to refine the model once the service is running.
Common questions
Questions about CMS.
Start with the care journey
Where is information making care harder to coordinate?
Show us where referrals, assessments, safeguarding, incidents, capacity or reporting are creating friction. We will help determine whether CMS, a specialist clinical system or a different route fits the problem. Please keep the conversation at service level rather than case level.