In our latest interview, we spoke with Hicom, the provider of healthcare technology, helping to optimise and increase efficiency across the patient care sector nationally and within specific clinical facilities.
We asked Hicom a few questions:
What is the most significant digital achievement for your organisation in the past 12 months and what will be the most over the next 12 months?
One of Hicom’s achievements over the last year has been the successful consolidation of eight individual trust systems into a single system instance, and further adaptation of business processes. This project required development of a dedicated data merge tool, capable of de-duplicating data based on the attributes of that data rather than its unique identifier. This then required a customisable rule set, to allow each organisation to integrate its data according to its needs. An extensive period of consultancy was required to introduce new methods of working for organisations that had worked in silos for many years. Finally, the project itself required reworking of the consolidated system to cope with the increased demand, and to deal with the more complex security requirements of a single system.
The next 12 months will see the migration of long-standing clients away from legacy systems, and onto the new Accent platform, which is explained in a bit more detail below. Hicom will also be moving trusts onto the platform.
What projects are you working on at the moment?
One of the main projects that Hicom is currently working on is the migration of its customer base to the Accent compliant version of Intrepid V10. One example of a successful migration comes from Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust. After implementing the new system, the Trust was able to keep track of junior doctor placements much more effectively by being able to see past, current, and future placements in one place. You can view the full case study here: http://www.hicom.co.uk/CaseStudy/ReadMore/4039
Additionally, Hicom is managing the roll-out of our new First Day Ready and specification of Quality Visits components. This is part of our modular solution, designed for the Accent platform specifically to support the management of the trust-based multi-professional workforce.
What problems/challenges are they to overcome?
- Management of a growing workforce with decreasing numbers of administrators
- Centralisation of data
- Secure access to data and data sharing
- Data exchange with other organisations
- Streamlining processes
- Replacement of paper-based and spreadsheet processes
- Accessible reporting
- Compliance with data legislation (GDPR)
What is your biggest technology challenge?
- NHS IT infrastructure
- Changes in attitude to data over the next 12 months with GDPR
What’s new for Hicom?
- Accent is a trust specific modular solution designed to support the management of a multidisciplinary workforce. Accent helps trust’s medical education departments effectively administer various aspects of the induction and continued management of the workforce, including time and attendance, scheduling, leave administration, quality visits, statutory training and much more. As a result, Accent helps to improve productivity, reduce operational risk, ensure trust compliance and eliminate unnecessary paper from an often complex workflow.
- Accent helps transform the way trust administration and human resources operate, storing relevant information in one secure database, which is accessible from anywhere via the internet. It gives more time to focus on strategic initiatives aimed at building a better workforce to care for patients.
- The system is built on 15 modules that can be used as a one powerful solution or can be implemented individually. The flexible reporting structure is simple to use, with the ability to pull off standard reports or build customised reports that meet trust needs. In just a few clicks it is now possible to generate a report of all trainees in a specialty, with their contact details, grades and rotation dates as well as the contact details of their educational and clinical supervisors, which has helped to improve communications with trainees and departments.
- Enhanced reporting tools – Hicom is in the process of replacing our primary bespoke reporting tool with Microsoft’s Power BI solution. This has been identified as providing the best combination of features that suit its customers’ needs, and meet their expectations:
- Ease of use
- Ability to extract (as well as visualise) data
- Ability to provide in-depth visualisation and insights
- Enhanced BI function – in addition to providing updated and enhanced tools, Hicom is committed to providing analytics as a service. This means that alongside its suite of reporting tools, Hicom provides access to data analysts who can recommend best practice for using the available tools, setup complex reports, and provide verification of both data and analytics quality. This service can remove the need for clients to have their own in-house data specialist.
