Now for our latest category: here we present the finalists in the category of Best Use of Digital for Integrated Care Systems.
ImproveWell
Overview. Black Country Local Maternity and Neonatal System (LMNS) launched an improvement programme in July 2023 using ImproveWell to enhance its services across multiple NHS trusts, with the programme already reportedly showing significant impact to date.
Why? Maternity services have come under intense scrutiny over the last decade, with a need to improve care in this area, and the NHS Staff Survey shows a growing proportion of
What happened? The LMNS launched a three-year programme with ImproveWell with the aim of enhancing maternity services, with objectives to engage frontline staff in these services by capturing quality improvement ideas and monitoring staff wellbeing, along with implementing such improvements across the region. ImproveWell offers a real-time feedback solution for continuous improvement and everyday innovation in health and care, based on the principles that those at the frontline are best placed to improve the systems around them, that staff deserve a voice, and that a happier workforce leads to better patient outcomes. It can gather insights from wider stakeholder groups and offers an AI-powered data dashboard to support monitoring of real-time data around workforce sentiments and improvements. The project at Black Country LMNS has led to around 200 active users, over 500 meaningful insights, improved staff experience and a continuous flow of improvement ideas generated by the frontline.
Looking ahead. The platform has been used to identify trends among staff which will be presented to senior management, with 80 percent of improvement ideas submitted by staff deemed to offer potential to generate efficiencies and improvements without need for additional funding.
e18 Innovation
Overview. e18 Innovation partners with 52 NHS organisations across 17 ICSs with the aim of addressing healthcare worker shortages through intelligent automation.
Why? By saving thousands of hours through automation e18 seeks to foster stakeholder collaboration, transform patient outcomes, redefine healthcare delivery and support organisations through burnout and resource constraints.
What happened? e18 Innovation is a female-led SME focused on helping the NHS become more self-sufficient through utilising automation and adopting new working methodologies. The human-centred design approach incorporates feedback from frontline workers with the aim of ensuring that the technology meets real-world needs. Processes are tailored to automate repetitive tasks such as appointment scheduling, patient record management and back-office administration. Current projects include Leeds Teaching Hospitals automating cardiology coding processes and generating over £700k in-year income; implementing waiting list validation also at Leeds, validating over 78,000 patients and removing around 8,000 who no longer needed to be seen; automating e-RS referrals into the EPR at Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust, leading to annual savings of £88,369; and automating the outpatient procedure coding process at Liverpool Women’s, ensuring compliance with the relevant dataset, enhancing data quality and improving real-time access.
Looking ahead. e18 is scaling across multiple areas within NHS organisations and has recently branched out into ICS work with utilisation for pathway work, indicating future scalability and adaptability.
Inhealthcare
Overview. Inhealthcare supported Leeds Teaching Hospitals to save an estimated 959 bed days between November 2023 and April 2024 through the roll-out of virtual wards, with weekly savings of nearly £15,000 and total cost savings of £372,000.
Why? West Yorkshire ICB sought to reduce avoidable hospital admissions, support early discharge, ease pressure on inpatient beds and emergency departments, and improve overall patient experience.
What happened? Inhealthcare was selected to support the development and expansion of virtual wards across Calderdale, Kirklees, Leeds and Wakefield, aiming to support the delivery of safe and convenient care to people at home who would otherwise be in hospital using Inhealthcare’s remote monitoring tech. Patients or caregivers are empowered to take measurements such as blood pressure and securely send readings to care teams via a range of digitally inclusive communication channels (app, text or telephone), with care teams provided with a single centralised view of patient data to support decision-making. Bespoke virtual wards were developed by the Inhealthcare development team and the roll-out was managed by the in-house project management team to ensure timely delivery.
Looking ahead. Whilst the first six pathways have focused on abdominal medicine, surgery and oncology, the trust plans to expand the service with a further six more pathways for patients with vascular, neurological and pancreatic conditions, with other additions to follow in the future.
Doccla UK Limited
Overview. Derby and Derbyshire ICB partnered with Doccla in July 2023 to integrate remote patient monitoring into their healthcare ecosystem, driving digital transformation to revolutionise how patients receive treatment and enabling patients to receive hospital-level support from their own homes.
Why? The project sought to harness cross-system resources to reduce organisational siloes and foster an inclusive culture of innovation, as part of efforts to develop a “fully flourishing digital health ecosystem”.
What happened? Through Doccla’s digital solution, patients are equipped with a customised suite of medical devices for vital sign tracking and a Doccla tablet with a patient app, through which they can log their observations for remote clinical monitoring. A team of dedicated community nurses also conduct home visits for patients who may be digitally excluded or exhibit deteriorating symptoms. The project involved a collaborative system-wide approach with a multi-disciplinary team including clinical staff, therapeutic services, pharmacy, administrative teams, and IT colleagues. Over 1,200 patients have been onboarded since the project’s inception, amounting to over 10,000 patient days. Notable outcomes include an estimated 1,478 GP appointments avoided; 240,015 minutes saved in clinical time; 8,712 bed days saved; and £3,005,675 saved from reduced bed days. Additionally, 94 percent of patients ranked the service as good or very good, and patient compliance is reported at 97 percent.
Looking ahead. Patients have provided positive feedback for the project going ahead, with a number of transferable benefits and versatility also noted, such as patients deemed unsuitable for remote patient monitoring still being able to utilise Doccla’s questionnaires to track pain levels and support end-of-life care.
Health Innovation Manchester & NHS Greater Manchester
Overview. People in Greater Manchester are reportedly receiving more personalised care through a new digital care plan and a patient-facing app ‘My GM Care’, further enhancing the GM Care Record and better informing care and treatment.
Why? The aim of the GMCR project was to increase clinical use of the GMCR by 20 percent in order to support frontline staff to deliver care, and reduce the amount of time staff spent tracking down important information or repeatedly asking patients.
What happened? A new care plan on the GM Care Record was developed and launched to support people with dementia and heart failure. Through these care plans professionals involved in a patient’s care could see their preferences, important medical notes and agreed approaches, forming a significant step forward in providing care tailored to personal needs. The GM Care app was also launched, providing patients with the ability to view their own information and contribute to their care. Additionally, more information has been brought into the GMCR through multiple sources, including more hospital trust data alongside preparing for access into community pharmacies and some care homes. Key outcomes show over 21,000 healthcare professionals using the GMCR over 270,000 times each month, a 21 percent increase in users from 22/23; an average of 33 minutes per day saved for acute staff; and time savings of £10m each year, based on current usage rates.
Looking ahead. With the care plans and app currently being tested in certain areas for certain conditions, HIN Manchester and NHS Greater Manchester hope to roll out the initiatives more widely across the region in coming months.
Orion Health & NHS Devon
Overview. Devon and Cornwall’s Electronic Treatment Escalation Plan (eTEP) is designed to address issues with disparate, paper-based treatment escalation plans by creating a centralised resource within the Devon and Cornwall Care Record (DCCR).
Why? It was hoped that the creation of eTEP would ensure visibility, quality and consistency across providers whilst also reducing unnecessary hospital visits, improving health outcomes and enhancing experience for both patients and staff.
What happened? The eTEP offers a living document within the DCCR using Orion Health’s Forms technology, offering easy and appropriate access with context launches and role-based access. It includes wide visibility of key information, with a dashboard panel within the DCCR patient summary highlighting key information to the user; mandatory fields to support complete information capture; printability; ability to update as patient wishes change; and clear audit trails so staff can see when and by whom the eTEp was completed. It went live in October 2023, initially in the Plymouth and West Devon area in PCNs, Livewell Southwest, University Hospital Plymouth and St Luke’s Hospice and user feedback was incorporated prior to wider roll-out. As of June this year, 5,260 eTEPs had been created with 10,275 views of the existing eTEPS, and user feedback has been “overwhelmingly positive”. The project is on track to hit a target of 85 percent of care home residents in Devon having an eTEP in place by 1 December 2024.
Looking ahead. Plans are in place to extend DCCR and eTEP access, with a range of organisations to be onboarded including South Western Ambulance Service, Devon’s out-of-hours service, Marie Curie, domiciliary care providers, three local authorities, additional care homes, and more. Additionally, there are plans for the DCCR to integrate with the NHS App to allow patients to access and eventually update their eTEP.
The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health & Digital Health and Care Wales
Overview. The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH), alongside Digital Health and Care Wales (DHCW), had a shared vision to deliver digital growth measurement capability at the point of care. RCPCH developed an open-source growth measures capability whilst DHCW brought the clinically-led ICS alongside nationally architecture to make it available across care settings.
Why? In the 90s standardised UK growth charts were developed as paper look-up charts to enable detection of deviation from normal growth. This has led to disparate systems and datasets with incomplete or inaccessible information, impairing clinical assessment.
What happened? RCPCH’s digital growth charts platform offers a more flexible digital equivalent to paper growth charts and performs the calculations of child growth parameters with reliable, instant results. It enables a “do once and share” approach, providing a single, national and validated system for accurate growth recording. The interactive chart offers percentiles, standard deviation scores, BMI and gestational correction, helping clinicians to understand a child’s growth trajectory at a glance. DHCW has brought the national architecture required to store, retrieve and present growth measures across care settings in Wales, with a multidisciplinary national clinical user group steering and shaping the user interface design to ensure it meets local requirements and workflows. Additionally, growth data is centrally stored and accessible within the open architecture to support population health decision-making, with information to be available through the Welsh Clinical Portal.
Looking ahead. Once the software is live, the clinical user group plans to prioritise future development and inform wider roll-out with the aim of maximising the clinical benefits gained.
