St Helens & Knowsley Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust has upgraded to the latest version of CCube Solutions’ electronic document management software (EDMS) as it continues its journey of shifting from paper light to paper free processes.
Utilising a completely re-architected version of CCube Solutions’ software, version 4 will introduce support for mobile and tablet devices, introduce additional workflow, OCR and eForms capabilities, and enable closer integration with the Trust’s other IT systems including a brand-new PAS.
Using a customised version of CCube Solutions’ EDMS software and a bespoke portal – created for the first time in the NHS further to close collaboration with clinicians and other key stakeholders – the Trust migrated away from a labour intensive and unsustainable paper process which involved moving 7,000 records each week between its two hospital sites – St Helens and Whiston. Around 130,000 medical records were digitised – some 41 million pages – which has saved the Trust £1.4 million annually further to an initial £1.2 million investment.
The digital system implemented mirrored the old paper medical file and displays information such as patient name, appointment time, last doctor’s letter, and has a range of links – so-called chapters – so that clinicians can quickly and easily delve into a patient’s medical history. Over 500 doctors and 130 medical secretaries were trained with the implementation gradually rolled out over 22 months.
Karl McIntyre, St Helens & Knowsley Health Informatics Services’ Assistant Director for Innovation, says, “We set the agenda for other NHS organisations to follow. Many Trusts have visited St Helens & Knowsley to see how we solved our paper problems. We’ve practically become the digital blueprint for modern medical records delivery.”
“We’ll be integrating EDMS with the Medway solution so that when you’re in the PAS, you’ll be able to click on a button and launch EDMS to view the scanned paper record of a patient. Currently clinicians have to flick between the two systems.”
Vijay Magon, CCube Solutions’ managing director, says, “Clinical and administrative processes in hospitals change all the time. You cannot successfully introduce EDMS if you expect an organisation to have to bend to the way the software operates. It has to support the way clinicians want to work and be configurable and flexible. That’s what we have achieved at St Helens &Knowsley along with all our other NHS trust customers and is why we get such wide scale clinical acceptance and buy-in.”
