Babar Shafiq, national business development manager at Radar Healthcare, joined us at HTN Digital ICS to explore how Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) can harness machine learning and AI to drive governance automation and integrate health and social care.
During his presentation, Babar demonstrated Radar Healthcare, a leading solution of risk, quality, and compliance software, and how it can be used throughout an ICS to improve governance oversight, patient safety, and resident care quality. Having faced similar challenges as a commissioner for local authorities, CCGs, and NHSE, at regional and national levels, Babar could not only empathise but also highlight the significant benefits of integrating health and social care services, and what that might look like.
The drivers for change
Babar evidenced a key challenge faced by commissioners by stating, “HIV is an example. Different commissioners at every level, each commissioning different parts of the pathway for the same group of patients, and historically, in my experience, not always talking to one another. Imagine all those key stakeholders sitting at the same table, working as part of one system and being able to commission the entire pathway together, with all their experience and knowledge.”
Babar then presented the findings of Radar Healthcare’s commissioned research on incident reporting in secondary care with 100 ward nurses, which identified some areas for improvement and key considerations.
According to the research:
- 92% of nurses log or report incidents immediately
- 64% want to improve their ward’s current reporting system
- 83% want more incident report training
- 40% believe their reports do not lead to better patient outcomes
The findings emphasised the need to support better health outcomes, boost staff engagement in incident reporting, and identify ways that suppliers might help this culture shift.
Click here to get your free copy of the ‘Incident reporting in secondary care,’ whitepaper.
Analytics dashboard at the ICS and acute trust levels
“Radar Healthcare provides one system for all your key business functions instead of having to use multiple systems such as Excel spreadsheets, Word documents, paper records, and Teams meetings,” Babar explained. “The system automates the analysis while making the processes themselves simple and transparent, with clear lines of accountability.”
The session then moved to the accessibility of Radar Healthcare’s system, analysing data trends across multiple locations. “The data will be analysed and split by locality; it can even be split by staff member. At a regional level, the degree of oversight that you have concerning your various locations means you can observe performance and risk without having to make phone calls or send emails. All the crucial information you need is on your screen and at the touch of a button,” Babar added.
“The level of data granularity that you can achieve for each of your regions and site locations is an invaluable resource to have at your disposal.”
Babar showcased some of the analytic dashboard features in Radar Healthcare, including the Pulse, which detects any irregularities in your data set, or any potential unwarranted variation. When a certain threshold is breached, as the lead, you can receive an SMS text message or an email informing you that the threshold has been breached and you can begin investigating. “In some cases, these anomalies may not be detected by the human eye, so it’s reassuring to know that the system is constantly analysing the data and trying to identify these trends independently, and it’s not reliant on you to take the time to gather data and perform separate analysis in order to detect these types of trends.”
Babar then shared a testimonial from Somerset NHS Foundation Trust, which encapsulated his previous points.
“The analytical capabilities that Radar Healthcare offers really excites us. Detailed data that makes a big difference in terms of sharing information and understanding trends,” said Governance Systems Manager at Somerset NHS Foundation Trust.
“Sharing learning is the key thing here,” Babar noted, “and the impact they can have in terms of motivating staff to use the technology, as it provides real value.”
Babar then moved on to investigate the insights that are driving greater clinical outcomes and efficiencies. He demonstrated an acute trust dashboard followed by a performance dashboard, both of which are powered by local data-driven evidence that shows unwarranted variation. He continues, “This could really help to support the identification and prioritisation of transformation projects.”
Software in action
Babar’s demonstration began with a user’s view of the dashboard, which displayed their entire caseload on a single screen, and the tasks they had been assigned, such as action plans, audits, documents, and events, to name a few, with corresponding deadline dates and progress and priority levels determined to each task.
He then showed a case of sepsis being reported on the Incident Management module at the service level and the path to how this is represented across an acute trust. Babar showed how, in less than 10 minutes, a sepsis case could be reported, with the relevant line manager notified and a workflow being created, outlining the next logical steps in terms of the investigation, and a relevant timeline for completion. This prompted the line manager to create an Action Plan which triggered an exploration and linking of other connected or unrelated cases of sepsis across the organisation.
The next step was to ensure that the most recent guidance or policy on sepsis management was available in the Documents library, identifying which version it was and viewing the timeline for when and by whom it will be reviewed. As a precaution, he linked the most recent guideline document using the Notices function and sent it to all employees to promote awareness of sepsis management. Finally, Babar, moved on to the Audit capability, scheduling a periodic audit and updating the Risk Register on how the trust was performing against the sepsis metrics.
This visualisation of an organisation’s entire multi-level risks, including corporate, departmental, and clinical was a powerful display of how risks can be monitored and mitigated through digital transformation. Babar noted the system’s intuitive nature, adding that when an incident is reported, “it knows there needs to be some consequential actions from that event.” This is beneficial because it no longer relies on staff to determine what the next steps are. The system makes it very clear and mandates the next steps. At this point, you could attach documents, create an action plan, link to another event or assign the case to someone else.”
Final thoughts
“It’s a way of demonstrating that if all the providers and stakeholders reported into one system – the level of oversight that you have is unmatched. You could go into ICS meetings with evidence and data to begin investigating with certainty, with your ICS partners, where the issues are, what the underlying causes are, and have those crucial discussions. The benefits that arise from being that one commissioner of a pathway and being able to see that pathway in its entirety with all the relevant stakeholders – it epitomises the collaboration we have all been talking about for some time.”
If you would like to learn more about Radar Healthcare, and how they can support with governance oversight of your ICS, book a free demo with one of their experts today at www.radarhealthcare.com
