Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust has introduced CardMedic, a communication app designed to help improve health equality and equal access to care, following a reported successful year-long pilot within the maternity department of Queen Elizabeth Hospital.
The app works alongside the trust’s existing interpreting service to support the trust with treating non-English speaking patients, “especially when face-to-face interpreting support is unavailable”, aiming to provide a better patient experience.
Offering “1000s of ready-made clinical interactions in over 50 languages and formats”, the trust is looking to the app as a means of delivering more accessible and equitable care.
Talking about the impact of the pilot, the trust’s CNIO, Amanda Fitzsimons, said: “Once maternity staff started using CardMedic and saw what it could do, there was a ripple effect and they started recommending it to their colleagues. Our nursing and midwifery directors saw its potential and are now driving its adoption across the trust.”
The trust hopes to “replicate the success of CardMedic in maternity by promoting its use across the whole organisation”, with the trust-wide rollout in January covering 7,500 staff, who have described the tech as “a good communication tool”.
Amanda highlighted the usefulness of the app in helping staff to talk with patients and gaining a better understanding of their needs, adding: “Being able to ask simple questions such as ‘what would you like to eat?’ or ‘can I take your blood pressure?’ enables staff to provide patients with the right type of support and rule out certain conditions or the need to do as many tests. Colleagues can carry out checks more quickly, smoothing out care delivery and potentially lead to cost savings.”
In other news from Lewisham and Greenwich, the trust recently awarded a contract worth an estimated £865,000 to ICNH Ltd (trading as DrDoctor) for a patient portal.
For a recent webinar on patient communication and engagement, we were joined by a panel to explore considerations for successful patient engagement, approaches and experiences, technical considerations, integration, change management and more.
