As we count down to the latest edition of our HTN Now Awards, we continue to explore all of the exciting topics and entrants featured this year. Next up, it’s the turn of the best tech solutions supporting healthcare teams across the country.
In this feature we’ll put the spotlight on award-hopefuls in our ‘Best Solution to Support Healthcare Teams’ category, which features familiar industry names such as Alcidion, Fysicon UK Limited, Hospital Services Limited and Oxehealth.
Find out what these companies are doing to assist our professionals out ‘in the field’…
HSL’s conferencing and collaboration in N.Ireland
Hospital Services Limited (HSL) provides shared conferencing, collaboration and telehealth infrastructure across HSCNI (Health and Social Care Northern Ireland).
This ‘shared service’ has, according to HSL, ‘enabled the community to, together, share a cost of ownership and a supported service’.
When the pandemic began, the company told us it had to ‘scale the infrastructure massively in six weeks from the middle of March to the end of April’. In that time, it saw a 2,400% growth in usage. This expansion included more clinicians, administrators and support staff across all areas of the NHS in Northern Ireland. The service also supported remote access to home-based staff.
HSL also told us it worked with a ‘broad base of clinicians’ to deploy a number of telehealth applications. These included:
- an app/infrastructure-driven telestroke service
- extending the use of telehealth across a wider range of clinical paediatric conditions
- support for diabetes patient groups
- introduction of remote cardiology services for pre-op assessment and rehabilitation
- introduction to neurological care in the community
- availability of remote support to mental health patients
- an integrated secure virtual consultation service for all.
Under what it calls an “all encompassing” infrastructure design, users can access the service from any device or app of choice.
Oxehealth tech supports staff in wards across England
Oxehealth’s technology, the Oxevision patient and management platform, has already featured in our remote monitoring category. But the system is also impressing as a solution to support healthcare teams.
The platform consists of a secure optical sensor that can be placed in patient rooms. It works by taking constant contact-free readings from a patient, no matter where they are. The algorithms, which track or ‘see’ movement, recognise critical areas such as beds and doors and trigger alerts or record activities for the report.
Oxevision has been deployed onto mental health wards across England. It is currently helping healthcare teams reduce incidents of violence and aggression at acute and psychiatric intensive care units. The technology is also being adopted to give patients the chance of better sleep at night. And this is where the remote monitoring aspect comes into play, as it clocks and provides medical grade pulse and breathing rate measurements, as well as the location and activity monitoring.
Across NHS England’s mental health hospitals, Oxehealth tells us 34,000 falls occur annually and self-harm incidents reportedly doubled between 2013-2017, while assaults on mental health staff increased 25% in the same timeframe.
With the current pandemic adding to the strain faced by inpatient facilities, which often face more demand than they have staff, Oxehealth’s system, known as Oxevision, supports professionals in a number of ways.
One example is at Oxford Health’s acute service, where staff have been using Oxevision in a new ‘night time observation protocol’. Early insights show it reduces sleep disturbance reported by patients, with stats revealing:
- 100% felt safer
- 100% were sleeping better
- 86% felt a greater sense of privacy.
Oxehealth tells us that the new protocol has saved staff over 900 clinical hours annually on the 20-bedroom ward. This means staff can ‘redeploy their time in the most efficient way to achieve the best possible care for patients’.
Meanwhile, at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, we’re told staff have been using Oxevision to take medical grade pulse and breathing rate measurements. Staff increased these measurements by 21.5 times versus the baseline measurement – apparently an increase of over eight times compared to the common NHS policy. Staff have also saved time through more efficient nursing and doctor reviews.
In our final example, at Coventry and Warwickshire Partnership NHS Trust’s (CWPT) dementia facility, Manor Hospital, 22-months post-implementation of the tech saw:
- 48% reduction in bedroom falls at night
- 68% reduction in A&E visits
- 71% reduction in 1-2-1 observation hours, saving 7,800 clinical hours annually for the 24-bed hospital.
In CWPT’s acute services, after 12-months, the Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit saw a 26% reduction in assaults in bedrooms, while acute wards had a 22% reduction in self-harm incidents in the bedroom, including 66% reduction in ligatures in patient bathrooms, and a 15% reduction in assaults in bedrooms.
Mel Coombes, Chief Nurse and Chief Operating officer at CWPT commented, “The early results show how nurses can use technology to drive continued improvements in patient safety and build confidence and reassurance in managing risks throughout our wards.”
Fysicon’s DataLinQ CRM tracks cardiac devices
Fysicon UK Limited is another name you may recognise from our remote monitoring awards feature. There we covered the benefits of the company’s DataLinQ CRM software, in regard to keeping tabs on patients and their cardiac implantable devices, outside of hospitals.
Here, we’ll take a closer look at how this system supports staff and teams directly.
We already covered how a new DatalinQ database at Royal Papworth Hospital NHS Trust in Cambridge enabled cardiac physiologists and administrators to follow patients over time. If you missed it, cardiologists used the system to ‘review longitudinal patient information’ regarding their devices, ‘assess performance’ and allow ‘optimization to improve battery longevity’ and reduce ‘inappropriate interventions’.
When patients came to the hospital for a check-up, the data was captured by DataLinQ and exported to an EMR (electronic management record), allowing everything to be handily and efficiently stored in one location.
Benefits to healthcare teams included being able to increase their efficiency, as the system provides one complete automated workflow, as well as minimising accidental human errors and saving staff time that would have otherwise been taken up by the manual transfer of data.
Of the engagement at Royal Papworth, Craig Hallett, General Manager at Fysicon UK, said: “The timing of go-live to coincide with the move to such a wonderful new hospital in 2020 was very fitting. It’s amazing that we were able to go live in the middle of a pandemic…a great testament to all of those involved in the process from all parties.”
Alcidion’s new tech Miya Precision nets two trusts
Miya Precision, a new technology for healthcare teams from supplier Alcidion, was launched to the NHS in 2020.
Known as a ‘smart clinical asset’ it is intended to alleviate ‘clinical cognitive burden’, deliver ‘intelligent clinical decision support’ and automate routine tasks across UK hospitals and regions.
Two trusts are using the Miya Precision suite: Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust, and South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
Miya Precision claims to be the first smart clinical asset in the NHS. It is said to ‘orchestrate management of information across disparate systems’ and offer a ‘unified and intuitive user interface’.
The solution has a suite of modules supporting areas such as: clinical noting, natural language processing, electronic observations, electronic prescribing, flow management and mobility.
More than 40 UK hospitals already use the company’s Patientrack system, which is part of the Miya Precision suite and has been used by healthcare teams to ‘enhance patient outcomes and safety with major reductions in cardiac arrests, ICU admissions’ and better management of conditions including AKI (acute kidney injury) and sepsis.
Andrew Adair, CCIO at South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust said of its potential impact: “Our agreement with Alcidion will allow us to accelerate our digital maturity and adopt modern technology that will have a very significant positive impact on the daily lives of the people who use it.
“The systems we are about to implement will help to lighten the burden faced by clinical staff who are working fantastically hard, by reducing time spent on manual processes and providing some extremely impressive clinical decision support tools.”
While Neil Perry, director of digital transformation at Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust added: “It provides a catalyst for us to harness digital technology in ways that allow our clinical staff to make informed decisions more easily, whilst focussing their time and efforts on delivering the best possible patient care and clinical outcomes.”
Want to find out which of these three fantastic entries wins the award? Stay updated by watching our video announcements from 11am on 22 January or monitor our Twitter feed for updates.
