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Florence raises £5 million in Series A
Florence, the recruitment marketplace connecting care home providers with qualified professionals to fill temporary shifts has raised £5 million in Series A funding.
Charles Armitage, Founder and CEO of Florence, said “The funding round is a direct response to the value we can add to the UK social care sector. We have a track record of significantly improving the ease and efficiency with which social care businesses can source and coordinate a flexible workforce, and the control and accessibility with which nurses and carers can connect to work. We are delighted to have secured this investment as we deepen our commitment to transforming the staffing and recruitment process in social care for the better.”
Florence will allocate its Series A funding to widening its nurse and carer user base. The funding will also be invested in the development of digital tools to improve the platform experience, and native apps including mandatory training and revalidation features.
WiFi SPARK and Datasym partner to reduce food waste and improve patient catering
WiFi SPARK, a provider of WiFi and technology solutions for hospitals, has announced a new partnership with catering software company Datasym. By integrating Datasym’s technology with WiFi SPARK’s SPARK® Media platform, hospital patients can order meals using their own internet connected devices. The solution effectively replaces the current pen and paper process of meal ordering, reduces food waste and provides significant cost savings to hospitals.
By reducing costs and wastage, SPARK® Media Medic has the potential to save up to £182,000 per year in food-related errors for the average 600 bed hospital.
“Food wastage is a huge problem for hospitals, which is why we’re really happy to be partnering with WiFi SPARK to give patients, and hospitals, a better way to order food,” said Chris Jones, Managing Director of Datasym. “With mounting pressures on hospitals to provide nutritional meals, the integration of our technology with the SPARK® Media platform ensures patients are able to make better food choices, all the while reducing pressure on staff, and on hospital budgets.”
New Nuclear Medicine Department opened
A newly refurbished state-of-the-art Nuclear Medicine Imaging Centre at St Helier Hospital was declared officially open last week.
Dr James Marsh, Joint Medical Director, said: “Some incredible science goes on in our Nuclear Medicine Imaging Centre, and it allows our experts to look at the physiology of our patients rather than just anatomy – for example, their work can be as varied as looking at moving cells in the brain to diagnose Parkinson’s, to helping our Intensive Treatment Unit (ITU) staff identify particular infections in patients.”
“Of course, protecting patients, visitors and staff from unnecessary exposure to radioactivity (however small a dose) is absolutely vital, and there are some key measures we have to take in order to do that – that includes separate toilets for those who have had their injection and those who haven’t (these are known as hot and cold restrooms, and they are decorated in vibrant red and blue respectively to send a clear signal to patients and visitors), different waiting rooms and lead-lined walls and windows.”
Digital advances in Scotland celebrated at Holyrood Connect ICT Awards
Edinburgh Napier University intensive care initiative, criticalcarerecovery.com, has won the Digital Health & Care Award at the Holyrood Connect ICT Awards sponsored by InterSystems.
The Award, sponsored by InterSystems, was awarded to Edinburgh Napier University, for the development of criticalcarerecovery.com into an e-health resource that supports recovery among intensive care patients across Scotland and the United Kingdom.
More than 160,000 people are admitted to an intensive care unit (ICU) in the United Kingdom each year, and the e-health innovation was specifically designed to help support patients with long-term physical and psychological issues after discharge home. The website has been viewed by more than 20,000 people since going live in 2016.
Dr Pam Ramsay, who also won the InterSystems sponsored Digital Impact Award, in February 2019, said “This is the second award that criticalcarerecovery.com has won in recent months and we are just as thrilled. Improving health and social care support for our patients and their families is at the heart of what we are trying to achieve, so this award is particularly welcome in helping to spread awareness of an important resource that can make a difference to people’s lives.”
“We know that 25% of patients end up back in hospital within three months of getting home after an ICU stay. Shockingly, that figure rises to 40% within six months, so there’s a real need to support these patients during their recovery and avoid unnecessary readmissions to hospital. Digital interventions have been shown to reduce readmission rates and healthcare costs in other patient groups, and we’d hope to demonstrate similar benefits with our website.”
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