Next we have our finalists in the category of solutions for connecting healthcare.
Islacare and Nottingham Healthcare Foundation Trust (NHFT)
Overview. Isla is used for sharing patient data between acute and community providers to support the continuation of care in stroke rehabilitation. The use of Isla within stroke reablement at NHCT and with acute partners has supported the sharing of relevant information to a patient’s stroke rehabilitation journey including videos and PROMS across wards, step-down facilities and when being cared for at home.
Why? Stroke rehabilitation is a complex patient pathway involving several multi-disciplinary teams so it is integral to have a secure and reliable mechanism for capturing and sharing data between organisations. In the absence of visual data, clinical teams have had to describe clinical interventions and outcomes which is both burdensome and time consuming. The ability to review videos captured on the ward provides rich patient context and gives patients the opportunity to contribute directly to their care record. Clinicians can share a patient’s data alongside the referral to provide practitioners with additional context, thus reducing wait times for orthotics and the time spent by stroke.
What happened? The Community Stroke team has also used the data captured within the ESD pathway to support additional onward referrals to acute teams such as spasticity and orthotics. Using Isla to support patients on stroke pathways has enabled clinical teams at NHCT and their acute partners to create a longitudinal view of a patient’s rehabilitation journey (using photos, videos and forms) and securely share that data to seamlessly transition the patient between clinical services at different healthcare organisations.
Looking ahead. Going forward, Isla will continue to monitor the benefits of bidirectional data sharing, patient self-management and the overall time-saving potential they are able to provide for both clinicians and community partners.
vCreate
Overview. vCreate Neuro is a secure video service developed with leading clinicians to connect patients, families, and healthcare professionals to improve cross-centre communication, remote diagnostics and clinical decision making.
Why? Approximately 80 percent of the population regularly use smart phones in their daily lives; vCreate Neuro utilises the universal presence of smartphones to empower patients and families to securely connect with healthcare specialists and to supply professionals with secure access to patient data. Patients and families can remotely upload videos of potential seizures, movement tests and other symptoms to the secure, cloud-based service wherein they can share metadata with clinicians who can then remotely make a diagnosis, give advice and much more.
What happened? – The clinician-to-clinician feature is helping to improve connections between different healthcare factions both in hospitals and the wider community, creating a more streamlined and collaborative service. This was recently utilised by Edinburgh’s Neonatal Physiotherapy team who received a video via vCreate from a family worried about their baby’s movements. Concerned by the footage, the team used vCreate Neuro to send the data to Dr Jay Shetty, Consultant Paediatric Neurologist for urgent review. Within a week, the baby was brought in for an EEG and diagnosed with infantile spasms and epilepsy. Thanks to the cross-communication between teams, the condition was caught early which helped prevent further damage to the baby’s brain development.
Looking ahead – vCreate Neuro continues to expand its range; being used by Texas’ Dell Children’s Medical Centre’s Paediatric Neurology team in St Lucia. The service is being adapted with external organisations to make it accessible to everyone on a global scale.
Lantum
Overview. Lantum exists to unite clinicians and employers on one platform to help deliver the best patient care together. Connecting Scheduling, Lantum’s total workforce management solution helps over 300 PCNs and 18 ICS efficiently schedule staff with a rostering solution, flexible staff pool and a vast network of locum clinicians.
Why? The NHS are heavily reliant on expensive recruitment agencies, WhatsApp, spreadsheets etc to resolve staff shortages and schedules. Connected Scheduling™ empowers them with total visibility and control over their resources and staffing. Lantum organises Clinical Governance checks for every bank staff member and GPs receive free DBS checks as well as how training on how to complete them. Other benefits of the platform include support for clinicians; ensuring their schedules are controlled and easily accessible, reducing the administration drawbacks and enabling them to connect with staff and peers must more easily.
What happened? During the pandemic, Lantum’s intelligent workforce management platform provided vital support to the NHS, offering their rostering tool for free across all vaccination clinics. Lantum has supported the delivery of over 16m doses of the vaccine by mobilising close to 9,000 staff across 36 different roles to work across the different clinics. Further to this, by offering the rostering tool for free, Lantum has saved the vaccination clinics approximately £250,000. Following this success, Lantum has been chosen as the preferred provider and began working with Kent and Medway in April 2021.
Looking ahead – Lantum is also supporting a remote consultation pilot to help fill more shifts in remote locations across the ICS.
Charac
Overview – Charac is on a mission to provide a one-stop digital platform for all independent community pharmacies, proving effective management and the best possible patient experience. Its technology allows independent community practices to actively manage their patient relationships while improving patient retention.
Why? – Over the past year, approximately 418 community pharmacies have closed, many of these closures impacting the most vulnerable people in communities. Charac is committed to supporting community pharmacies in their provision of efficient, affordable, and inclusive healthcare. Charac’s one-stop platform can help community pharmacies attract and retain patients they need to drive revenue and compete with larger high street pharmacies. Charac offers crucial time saving across pharmacy operations by enabling patients to book consultations, order prescriptions and arrange video consultations all through a digital platform.
What happened? – This year, Charac has made several transformative ideals which have helped them become a key player in the UK’s health tech industry. They began a go-live roll out in Pharmacies in Autumn 2022, which has so far resulted in over 300 pharmacies signing up to go -live by end of March 2023. A £1 million investment from Royal Mail has enabled Charac to leverage strong levels of trust between pharmacies and postal staff; ensuring local pharmacies retain their position as an essential provider of frontline healthcare.
Looking ahead – With Charac dedicated to bettering digital interaction with patients, both partnerships are set to provide pharmacies with the necessary funding and cutting-edge technology to aid delivery of fast and efficient primary care.
Norfolk Community Health and Care NHS Trust and Virgin Media Business
Overview – The Norfolk Community Health and Care NHS Trust redesigned its digital infrastructure by transitioning to a cloud-based, software defined wide area network (SD-WAN) supported system in partnership with Virgin Media Business. This resulted in fewer serious network incidents, freeing up clinicians’ time for better patient care.
Why? – The existing infrastructure, which was underpinned by Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) networking technology, could not meet the needs for a large community health trust. They needed a digital strategy which could support and connect more than 3,000 members of staff – largely comprised of clinicians working directly with patients, nurses, doctors, dentists and allied health professionals. Clinicians also reported that the existing infrastructure did not support them to make innovations and to “do differently” in the interest of improving outcomes for their patients.
What happened? – The shift to a Cloud-based SD-WAN system necessitated a full digital transformation across the full NCH&C system and beyond, including a rollout expansion to the Integrated Care System (ICS) and more than 150 GP surgeries. It meant moving to a multi-Cloud hybrid infrastructure and security system. This dramatically reduced the occurrence of P1 outages and delivered significant cost saving due to the improved network speed and resilience.
Looking ahead – The SD-WAN system continues to deliver results for clinicians and patients. The Digital Leadership team aspires for it to support virtual wards going forwards – and they are also exploring new ways of attaching devices to our network.
T-Pro
Overview. T-Pro is a speech and language processing technology which provides flexible cloud-based digital solutions across NHS organisations. T-Pro’s technologies help clinicians document patient care, communicate better, and reduce the significant burden of documentation.
Why? With clinicians spending on average, over fifty percent of their time on administrative tasks, T-Pro provides innovative technological solutions such as speech recognition, natural language understanding and workflow automation tools, meaning each workflow is tailored for the individual user. By providing clinicians with the right tools, this not only improves their efficiency and well-being, but it also allows them to have better interactions with patients. The system also supports the NHS Foundation Trust’s ‘paper-light agenda’ – saving time, reducing costs, and increasing efficiency.
What happened? More NHS organisations have been using T-Pro in recent years and have been seeing huge benefits in AI-driven flexible solutions, proven to optimise and deliver efficient workflows, save time, and reduce costs for organisations. At a 20 percent electronic distribution uptake in 2022 and 80 per cent electronic document storage, this equates to a paper-saving equivalent of 1,500 trees. T-Pro is proud that its technology is not only having a positive impact on clinicians and patients but also on the environment too.
Looking forward. T-Pro was recently awarded the contract to provide its speech-to-text solution to Practice Plus Group, England’s largest independent provider of NHS services.
