An in-house developed software tool is helping to tackle discharge delays at University Hospitals of North Midlands NHS Trust, anonymising and analysing data relating to patient discharges to help identify those who could benefit from virtual ward review or early intervention to avoid delays.
The High Risk of Delayed transfer of care (HRD) tool was developed in partnership with local NHS providers, Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent ICB, the North Staffordshire GP Federation, and Keele University. It is currently in use at the Royal Stoke University Hospital, where it is being trialled in areas including the emergency department and older adults wards.
Sharing details of how the tool works, Andrew Davy, GP lead for research and development in ED at UHNM, said that with patient’s permission, their care records are accessed to search for “expected risk factors” associated with delayed discharge, which are then represented virtually on a dashboard by the tool, allowing relevant teams to “follow up on actions”.
Hayley Bishop, director for integrated discharge at Midlands Partnership Foundation Trust, spoke of the tool’s potential to “significantly change the way in which discharges are planned, and admissions avoided through proactive communication at point of attendance”. The tool’s usefulness in facilitating earlier discharge and “reducing the risk of hospital acquired functional decline” could also help “support more patients to return home rather than into alternative accommodation for ongoing care assessment”, she continued.
UHNM also recently celebrated the opening of its new digital hub at the Royal Stoke University Hospital, which will be home to its digital services teams, allowing them to “work collaboratively in a new and inviting space”. Amy Freeman, UHNM’s CDIO, spoke of the value the hub will add in allowing digital teams to work collaboratively, saying: “Team work has to start with coming together, and this new hub gives us just that.”
Data use across the NHS: improving outcomes, informing decision-making, and more
This month, a £10 million national framework agreement has been published for the provision of data validation services, to enable NHS organisations to “access highly specialised support to enable the testing and validation of patient data, as part of the process of migrating from a legacy PAS to a modern EPR system”. The framework sets out to offer NHS organisations expert assistance, including in the validation of incomplete pathways and in understanding data quality issues which might affect migration to an EPR system, allowing them to offer assurance on the accuracy of patient data and “support the optimal use of the EPR from implementation”.
The Scottish Government published a response to a report commissioned from an independent expert group on ‘Unlocking the Value of Data’, focusing on maximising the value of “Scotland’s public sector personal datasets in secure, ethical and transparent ways, to realise public benefit”. The report puts forward a total of 19 recommendations under three key aims: engage, enable, and ensure – addressing the aim to make data more accessible for “ethical use by Scotland’s innovators and researchers”.
And the UK Government published its AI Opportunities Action Plan, accepting recommendations for expanding computing capacity, establishing AI growth zones, unlocking data assets, and sharing alongside a proposed delivery timeline. On data assets, accepted recommendations include rapidly identifying “at least 5” high impact public data sets to make available to AI researchers and innovators, with the DSIT reportedly planning to explore this as it develops the National Data Library, with further details to be published by summer of 2025.
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