Q Exchange, the collaborative community-funded programme started by the Health Foundation has revealed the projects that will qualify for £30,000 worth of funding.
122 proposals were trimmed down to 30, with entrants demonstrating their ideas around a theme of ’embedding positive changes emerging through new collaborations or partnerships during COVID-19′.
Projects include virtual frailty multidisciplinary clinics, e-learning tools, solutions connecting secondary and primary care, to collaboration software.
A project based at Barts Health NHS Trust will focus on remote consultations, aiming to support non-English speaking patients.
At Musgrove Hospitals the team have outlined their idea for an online database of digital literacy resources, and to appoint a digital mentor to assess teams and their digital skills.
Oxford University Hospitals NHS FT (OUH) is to introduce a digital solution between primary-secondary care to streamline blood tests for secondary care to facilitate remote monitoring of patients. It will focus on patients with chronic health conditions including those with kidney disease, where they need to be followed-up every three to four months.
Pre-COVID, renal clinic appointments were face-to-face consultations and blood tests were performed then. Now telephone and video consultations are being used to minimise contact. Patients previously had blood tests either at OUH or at their GP practice. In a patient survey it showed that 92% found telephone consultations effective but would prefer blood-tests at their GP practice.
The project aims to streamline the patient pathway for undertaking blood tests in the community to facilitate remote consultations. The team will introduce a new digital solution (CareAware Connect) that will link GP practices and Cerner Millennium in secondary care. Patients will be informed of the need for a blood test by phone or text message, via a patient portal function within EPR (electronic patient records).
GP practice phlebotomists will then use the CareAware connect device to scan the unique barcoded identifier card (each patient will be provided with one) to print EPR requests labels. Blood samples tagged with EPR labels will be sent to OUH for processing and the results returned to the requesting clinician and to patients via the patient portal.
Great North Children’s Hospital will continue a project to embed KidzHub, a one stop portal for families across the region to contact for repeat high-risk prescriptions to be delivered to home or close to home. The funding will be used to release time for a team of pharmacist and paediatrians to set up KidzHub. This will include testing the system, writing protocols, collaborating with regional GPs, pharmacists, regulators and commissioning bodies for long term sustainability.
To read more about the projects please click here.
