Here are our finalists for the category of Innovation of the Year.
VitVio
Overview: VitVio introduces an AI-powered platform designed to revolutionise surgical operations within the NHS by providing real-time analytics and procedural oversight.
Why? Current inefficiencies in these theatres, including procedural delays and suboptimal resource use, contribute to an estimated £4.5 billion spent annually by the NHS on surgical services.
What happened? By integrating sophisticated cameras and machine learning algorithms, VitVio tracks surgical instruments, procedural stages, and team dynamics, ensuring strict adherence to safety protocols and optimising operational efficiency. At the heart of VitVio’s innovation is its real-time surgery progress monitoring system, employing computer vision to track and update surgical stages directly to the operating team via an intuitive dashboard and automated action triggering. Implementing VitVio involves a minimally invasive setup process where cameras are strategically positioned in operating theatres without disrupting existing workflows. The system’s integration is designed to be compatible with existing NHS information systems, maintaining stringent data security and privacy standards essential for medical data handling in the UK. The platform empowers theatre staff with real-time, actionable insights, enabling proactive surgical management. A notable implementation at the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt NHS Orthopaedic Hospital underscores VitVio’s impact in streamlining operations and diminishing resource wastage.
Looking ahead. VitVio hopes to continue to offer substantial cost savings, improved efficiency, and better patient outcomes for surgery as healthcare continues to evolve towards more integrated and intelligent systems.
Patchs
Overview: Patchs Telephone Assistant offers a solution to the problem of the ‘8am rush’ that is putting practices under intolerable strain.
Why? In 2023, Lingwell Croft, a busy GP practice in Leeds (15,000+ patients), approached Patchs, wanting to implement a modern general practice model; however, operating in an urban area facing both economic deprivation and an aging population, doing so was not a straightforward task.
What happened? Patchs Health developed the Telephone Assistant, with speech-recognition technology designed to put an end to the ‘digital divide’ between those who struggle to use online services and those who can. Patients provide their name and date of birth, which is checked against the Patient Demographic Service API to verify their identity. They are then asked open-ended questions about their problem, responding using their voice, just as they might in a traditional GP consultation. Because Patchs Telephone Assistant can be used in conjunction with Patchs AI, it also turns the telephone into a medical device. The responsibility placed on reception staff is removed, increasing patient safety. The solution eliminates call waiting times, processing an unlimited numbers of calls in parallel, reducing patient waiting times to zero and eliminating the ‘8am rush’. Between February 2023 and 2024, improvements included a 33 percent increase in same day appointments, a 572 percent increase in online consultations, and a 58 percent reduction in response time. Receptionist time saved is around 792 hours per year, with cost savings of £5,030 per year.
Looking ahead. The Telephone Assistant is now in use at 38 GP practices across the UK, supporting 500k+ patients and 15k calls per month, potentially saving 33,604 patient hours, 26,351 receptionist hours, and £167k per year.
Clinrol
Overview: Clinrol’s AI-powered platform revolutionises patient recruitment for clinical trials by leveraging advanced data analytics and machine learning, increasing enrolment rates and streamlining the trial process.
Why? Recruiting patients for clinical trials has traditionally been a time-consuming and complex process, often resulting in delays and increased costs, hindering the progress of clinical research.
What happened? Clinrol’s platform uses AI and ML to streamline patient recruitment, analysing vast datasets to identify potential participants who meet specific trial criteria. It leverages predictive analytics to forecast patient behaviour and optimise engagement strategies, ensuring that the right patients are matched with the right trials efficiently. To support remote participation, the platform integrates telemedicine capabilities, allowing patients to consult with researchers and participate in trials from the comfort of their homes. The platform provides real-time tracking and monitoring of patient data, ensuring accuracy and integrity throughout the trial. Designed with the patient in mind, the platform offers a simple and intuitive interface that guides users through the recruitment process and provides ongoing support. Since its implementation, Clinrol’s platform has achieved a 30 percent increase in patient enrolment rates for clinical trials, significantly accelerating the research timeline. The platform has expanded internationally, ensuring a diverse participant pool, enhancing the applicability of trial results.
Looking ahead. Clinrol plans to further develop algorithms to increase matching accuracy and predictive power, extend its reach to more countries, and build more partnerships with healthcare and technology organisations.
X-Lab Systems
Overview: LabgnosticEQA transforms external quality assessment (EQA) from a time-consuming, manual error-prone activity to a quick, simple, automated one, freeing clinicians to concentrate on delivering patient care.
Why? EQA is an activity that detracts from a lab’s ability to focus on patients because it is a manual, repetitive, time-consuming process that is prone to human error, particularly the typing of thousands of results into EQA provider web portals.
What happened? LabgnosticEQA connects directly to each lab’s Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS), enabling it to send test orders in and receive results out in exactly the same way as a GP, hospital or other laboratory. Each EQA provider publishes their programmes in our online directory. Labs use this to quickly self-automate their EQA subscriptions through our online interface, adding the lab codes that enable LabgnosticEQA to generate the orders into their LIMS that labs can then process just like a normal patient test. When the lab electronically returns the results, LabgnosticEQA transforms the lab’s local result codings into the EQA provider’s expected codings, so that each EQA provider receives the results in the same format as they would if they were typed manually into their portal. The ‘publish and subscribe’ model used by LabgnosticEQA enables labs to self-automate their existing enrolments without needing to coordinate with their EQA provider. Labs can be set up when it is convenient for them, crucial in a time-critical environment.
Looking ahead. X-Lab Systems hopes to continue to help labs to free-up clinician time by reimagining the way EQA is delivered.
Provide Community CIC
Overview: ImpactEQ streamlines Equality and Health Inequalities Impact Assessment (EHIA) processes, provides intuitive guidance, replicates robust governance, and enables best practices in decision-making.
Why? Mid and South Essex Foundation Trust (MSEFT) and Mid and South Essex (MSE) ICB had identified that the quality of EHIAs could be improved, and their existing paper-based process was seen as a tick-box exercise, with complex Excel sheets and little focus on any value-add activities or quality of outputs.
What happened? MSEFT and MSE ICB approached Provide Digital, part of Provide Community, to develop a digital platform to improve the EHIA process with the capability to filter questions, deliver intuitive guidance, replicate robust governance, streamline processes, and more. The multi-agency project team collaborated closely with staff involved in equality work. We ran a workshop in November 2022 with community providers and local authorities to garner wider interest and it was agreed to develop a joint digital tool for wider use. Development funding was secured through the MSE ICB Health Inequality Programme. The tool also links to the MSE ICB Athena Data Platform to provide appropriate data for consideration and avoid duplication. ImpactEQ was launched as a pilot in July 2023, with a whole product go live in October 2023. In this one case alone, ImpactEQ is estimated to save 13,570 hours of staff time – a cost saving of approximately £354,000 Provide Digital charged £50,000 for the system development across five partners (£10,000 per partner). This represents an estimated cost saving for the acute Trust alone of almost £350,000.
Looking ahead. Provide Community are already sharing our learning across NHS England, working with regional and national colleagues to make them aware of the development of ImpactEQ and its potential to improve efficiency, governance and outcomes for staff and patients.
Help-Doctor
Overview: Help-Doctor is offering 24-hour access to specialists, and patient and waiting room management of doctors’ practices for clinics & doctors’ offices.
Why? To enhance the telemedicine offering for clinics and medical offices.
What happened? Help-Doctor is looking to improve Parkinson’s disease management and accelerate the research of new treatments by offering digital monitoring for specific neuromarkers/digital biomarkers with unique wearable medical devices and telemedicine. It offers 3 families of functionalities: Pillbox, Symptom Diary and Activities. The key advantage is to assist patients in their daily life in the follow-up of their drug therapy, but also to accustom the user to manage the symptoms of his disease with physical and speech therapy exercises. While consultations with neurologists take place once or twice a year, and appointments with paramedical teams are difficult to obtain. ‘Parkinson App’ proposes a daily accompaniment, at the patient’s home, with a daily report allowing patients to learn to live with the disease while optimising the follow-up of its evolution.
Looking ahead. Help-Doctor hopes to continue to improve access for patients and waiting room management for healthcare organisations.
Quality Compliance Systems (QCS)
Overview: Launched this year QCS Quality Centre helps manage assessments, with an online audit tool and digital mock inspections, both available with no set-up fees to help care providers prepare to pass their next inspections.
Why? One of the main focus areas and stress factors for care providers is the understanding of their regulator’s inspection processes. The fear of failing an inspection is always there, and if services do fail it could have a huge knock-on effect to their jobs and businesses.
What happened? QCS Quality Centre has no set up fees, and customers can start assessing their care service through online audits and digital mock inspections in seconds. Audits can be pre-scheduled or conducted ad-hoc and can be completed on desktop or mobile. The findings are captured, and an action plan built/records saved, with easy tracking to ensure assigned actions are followed through on. Mock inspections are carried out digitally and saved in one location to see how they would rate and to be used as evidence when they are inspected against all key questions by regulators such as the CQC. Dashboards and reports are available to provide management oversight on business performance. A comprehensive range of audit templates and mock inspections are aligned to regulator key questions, helping customers to quickly establish an assessment programme for their service.
Looking ahead. QCS Quality Centre hopes to continue to help towards getting/keeping that ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ rating – helping every business that uses it to prepare to pass.
Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust
Overview: Guy’s and St Thomas’ (GSTT) innovative use of automation to improve patient pathways, waiting list administration, and missed appointments.
Why? To take over manual and repetitive tasks, reduce administrative waiting list errors, and increase efficiency.
What happened? Resolving errors with robotic process automation (RPA), underpinned by a robust clinical governance framework, the team were able to eliminate 54,000 errors ahead of the new EHR launch in October 2023; this was equivalent to 1,300 hours of staff time in nine months. A further application of automation assists with ensuring patients do not miss appointments in the Diabetes Eye Screening Programme. To minimise the risk of missed appointments, SMS appointment reminders are vital. Approximately 25 percent of SMS reminders sent to patients would fail as they do not have an accurate mobile phone number for the patient. GSTT implemented automation to ensure mobile phone numbers are kept up to date, so that the service can send SMS reminders. In the first six weeks of launch, this automation updated phone numbers for 71 percent of patients registered to the service and early findings show a decrease in DNA rate.
Looking ahead. GSTT hopes to continue to see improvements in patient pathways and efficiency, with the help of automation.
North West London Pathology
Overview: Implementing the UK’s largest and most advanced Pathology IT system: a generational leap.
Why? As a network formed of three separate trusts, NWLP faced problems with multiple, incompatible LIMS running across seven lab sites, slow paper-based processes, inconsistent site backups, siloed teams, and increased costs from running four end-of-life LIMS systems simultaneously.
What happened? Over 100 staff consultations were held, and over the last year, NWLP replaced 1,000+ computers, standardised lab equipment across all seven sites, created a single, central database, and offsite backups for over a million records, and introduced a ‘one size fits all’ training solution for all new staff and promotions. To date, 280+ GP surgeries have access to results data, and £1.1m in costs has been saved by terminating legacy systems. Integration with local and national systems allows remote access and point-of-care testing support. Abnormal results are flagged across the system, further supporting clinicians, and results are comparable across the entire service. The implementation of an all-site LIMS and a custom-built blood bank database of over a million records have made the most significant contributions to our success, with a custom-built new staff and promotion onboarding programme, the introduction of a standardised costing system/solution for all three hospital trusts, and the pathology records of patients in the North West London region are now a unified, complete pathology history that can be accessed by healthcare providers at any stage or level of care.
Looking ahead. NWLP has already been approached by organisations to assist in their implementation of similar solutions, and hopes to share learnings from this project as widely as possible.
Next up: browse the entries for the category of Best Use of Data here.
