We spoke with industry experts to find out what technologies you should explore right now.
1. eShare, leave bad meetings in the past
Bad meetings are the bane of every persons working life, the time and cost implications of poorly organised meetings is immense. eShare has been developing software to improve the efficiency of meetings and the transparency around decision making with their governance enhancing board portal, BoardPacks. The platform focuses on streamlining board meeting preparation as well as allowing directors to participate fully in the meeting by providing the right information at the right time, when they need it.
The alternative is wasted email exchanges, PDF or worse still, paper, meeting packs printed for the board.
Providing a structure for board and committee meetings is vital to allow the correct critical decisions to be made, and in many cases organisations want to use their Office 365 infrastructure for this. That’s why they developed MeetingSquared.
MeetingSquared allows agenda-led meetings to be conducted in a structured way, with all of the meeting materials presented as and when they’re needed.
By conducting meetings on the MeetingSquared platform, attendees will have instant access to past meetings, minutes, actions and decisions.
We asked eShare what was next for their platform?
With the recent announcement from Microsoft and the Department for Health of the provision of free upgrades to Windows 10 and Office 365 for all NHS organisations, the next step for MeetingSquared is for it to be widely embraced across the sector, providing benefits to thousands of healthcare professionals.
What’s the biggest challenge you face?
The biggest challenge that eShare has faced with MeetingSquared is the understanding from team leaders in organisations that this solution isn’t going to take months to implement and train up on, but that you can be up and running organising a meeting within minutes of installation.
2. IMS Maxims, EPR Augmented Intelligence
We spoke with Neill McAnaspie, Solutions Director, IMS Maxims to understand what’s next for IMS Maxims “We are building augmented intelligence into our electronic patient record, to offer a virtual healthcare assistant that supports clinicians and healthcare professionals in engaging patients in their treatment options and collecting informed consent.”
“Leveraging an augmented intelligence platform that integrates into the patient record, our MAXIMS EPR will provide a friendly, personalised chatbot service for patients. It will gather and interpret key pieces of information in their care pathway, such as treatment options, self-management, medicine adherence and informed consent, in turn removing these manual and often duplicated processes from a clinical appointment.”
“Patients will have an on-demand service that offers advice and support as and when they need it, and staff will use this information to provide more personalised and effective care during the face to face interactions.”
“Patients feel more informed and empowered over their treatment pathway, and staff can deliver better, faster services. Plus, hospitals can collect, aggregate and analyse the data, along with the other administrative and clinical data in MAXIMS, to provide an enterprise wide approach to population-health management – the key to preventative, personalised medicine.”
3. iPLATO, empowering patients with access to their medical services
Independent reports say that 27% of GP appointments are unnecessary; when the number of patients asking for GP appointments has gone up 23% in the last five years, and the NHS is losing nearly 500 general practitioners per year, the supply and demand is a major factor in the frequent Winter crises.
iPLATO allows patients to book appointments through the myGP app keeping the phoneline at the practice available, cancel unnecessary appointments if they are no longer needed ,freeing up the time for other patients, patients without smartphones are able to cancel their appointments via SMS, without the need of any staff member at the practice to intervene. Once an appointment has been booked, the system uses its knowledge (intelligence) of local services to signpost the patient to a more appropriate service. This may include the address of their local STI clinic, where blood tests are taken, the local mental health services, any centrally supported CCG initiatives e.g. smoking cessation, etc.
We asked what was next for iPLATO?
The company said “We will expand the scope of care alternatives from the current 12% to address 17% of unnecessary GP appointments and introduce an Expert Systems framework (Supervised Machine Learning) to eventually automate some information exchanges.”
“We are undertaking myGP upgrades that will enhance the user experience, adding tools to improve the patient and clinician experience from today’s telephone consultation to, within myGP, include secure voice and video calling, new tools to effectively and securely exchange images, video clips and information leaflets as well as recording this communication on the GP Principal System.”
4. IMMJ MediViewer, providing access to critical information fast
In its 2017 report ‘Fit for 2020’, NHS Digital outlined their strategic vision including the overarching objective to be ‘Paper free at the point of care’. MediViewer provides a solid foundation to help hospitals to achieve this objective by removing historic paper patient records from circulation. By capturing new information both on paper and digitally it provides access to a holistic digital health record for the patient.
HTN asked what was next for the solution?
A spokesperson said “One of many exciting developments is our advanced querying module. This will allow the authorised user to interrogate their vast digitised patient repository to examine trends and patterns of behaviour, providing valuable operational insights. Anticipated benefits will range from being able to find a single misfiled patient document amongst terabytes of data to providing oversight of inpatients that have not completed a VTE assessment or discharge summary. It will also help streamline the clinical audit process – the possibilities are endless!”
5. Graphnet, MyCareCentric Epilepsy
Epilepsy is a life-changing and life-limiting condition which affects 1 in every 131 people in the UK and is responsible for c.990 deaths a year in England, 400 of them preventable.
Seizures are unpredictable, causing a loss of awareness and control, which can mean everyday activities can present a major risk to sufferers. Epilepsy accounts for 2-3% of Emergency Department attendances, 1.3m bed days each year and estimated to cost £2bn annually. Successful diagnosis and treatment is extremely complex and challenging as it relies on the availability of accurate and complete patient information across care settings.
MyCareCentric Epilepsy is an integrated care solution that improves the treatment and quality of life for epilepsy sufferers through a combination of patient apps, wearables, shared care records, machine learning and data analysis.
Thanks to the wealth of patient information available from the app, care teams are able to support those in need on a more timely and proactive basis. There are also benefits to the health service by reducing outpatient and emergency department visits, preventing hospital admissions and cutting medication bills.
The solution has been piloted at Poole Hospital since Sept 2016. Since then, Poole Hospital Trust says users have reported an 80 per cent reduction in the time taken for medical professionals to respond to individuals when they suffer a seizure, as well as 30 per cent fewer hospital admissions.
6. Ingenica Solutions 360, back office efficiency
Ingenica Solutions’ 360 inventory management solution has helped Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust transform their supply chain and procurement across their trust and adopt best practice inventory management. Implementation of Ingenica Solutions’ 360 Inventory management solution means that good data now drives all purchasing decisions, enabling effective inventory management and supporting accurate patient level costing.
This leads to improvements in productivity, and operational efficiencies. It also achieves cost savings, increases stock control and visibility, enables space utilisation, enables product standardisation and rationalisation and reduces wastage. The solution boasts some impressive benefits:
- £5 million of balance sheet adjustments recovered through stock visibility
- Savings of over 10,000 clinical hours; the equivalent of over 5 FTE, more clinical resource now available to patient care
- Improved reliability and increased visibility in the Trust’s supply chain
Ingenica Solutions focuses in the areas of procurement, supply chain, inventory management, track and trace to patient, and the back-office across the NHS; bringing significant benefits to the NHS and suppliers to the challenging, fast-moving healthcare environment.
7. The Tovertafel, award-winning game for people with mid-to -ate stage dementia
The Tovertafel Original is specially designed for those living with mid-to-late stage dementia and looks to reduce those suffering from apathy by stimulating physical activity and social interaction through its 14 games.
The Tovertafel is a small box that can be mounted onto the ceiling above a table, and inside the box is a high-quality projector, infrared sensors, speaker and processor that work together to project the games onto the table. The colourful objects respond to hand and arm movements, meaning residents get to play with the light itself. The games stimulate a level of physical and social activity rarely seen in people living with dementia.
We asked what was next for the solution?
A spokesperson said “We’ve had a great success in introducing the Tovertafel Original to the UK market, being up and running in 250 care services in the UK in just over a year and we are looking to partner with a university later this year to continue research into dementia. For me, the biggest benefit is the change you see in the individual with dementia. We judge ourselves on how many moments of happiness we bring. We’re well on our way to 5,000 people experiencing these moments each day in the UK, our goal is to reach 10 million a day as soon as possible.
Thank you to our Sponsor eShare who are a global company striving to improve governance by providing software to revolutionise meetings. Manage board meetings, risk, decisions and documents in one place, with our software. Electronic paperless meeting solution developed to save time, reduce administrative burden, streamline governance and increase security. Our software is used by over 500 clients in the UK and overseas across public, private and third sectors.
