Airedale General Hospital has gone live with a geospatial system to help manage its reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) monitoring and repairs programme.
The geospatial system uses geographic information system software from Esri UK, replacing paper-based processes. Formerly, the RAAC inspection process “relied on hand-written surveys to record defects, including cracks, movement or moisture, which were then transferred into Excel”, with photos and floor plans uploaded manually to show changes to risks across wards.
The hospital notes the go-live responds to needs the hospital identified for “a more sophisticated method to help perform complex calculations for tracking defects and monitoring how different sections of planks were deteriorating at different rates”.
Richard Burgin, estates project manager, highlighted that, “the existing manual survey process was not capable of dealing with the sheer volume of work”, adding that, “it became obvious the hospital needed a single, joined-up view of RAAC risk to generate the inspection frequencies and the ongoing programme of remediation works”.
“The Esri GIS has given us a more robust and resilient process, with a reduced risk of human error that instantly shows different levels of risk so we know where to focus. RAAC has a major operational impact, sometimes disturbing clinical and operational functions so surveys and mitigation work needs to be accurate and fast and the system underpins that.”
In future, there are plans to create dashboards to enhance RAAC data reporting and consumption, “allowing hospital staff to self-serve and generate their own statistics using different parameters”, as well as providing KPIs “to further aid the management of the problem from an operational and financial perspective”.
At a webinar earlier this year for our live event series, HTN Now, we were joined by Rachel Woodington, digital care hub manager at Airedale NHS Foundation Trust, and Ruben de Neef, customer success lead at Luscii, to discuss the virtual COPD service launched at the trust including benefits, challenges and key learnings.
Elsewhere in innovation, Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust has launched ‘The Silent Hospital Pilot Project’, seeking to reduce levels of noise on a postnatal ward by introducing technology capable of silencing patient call bells and driving the audible alerts to staff mobile phones instead.
