London and Derby-based digital messaging platform Alertive has secured £3.7 million from private investors to drive its UK expansion, announcing plans to “continue breaking down communication barriers within healthcare teams by integrating more third-party systems and enhancing workflows”.
The platform has been developed to meet requirements for task management and communication within healthcare environments, and is currently being used in 25 hospitals across 15 NHS trusts, with a reported 50,000 users.
“We have the opportunity to become the go-to application for clinicians to access the information they need, where and when they need it, reducing the administrative burden and unlocking a happier and more productive workforce” said Kevin Douglas, CEO. “We’ll continue to work closely with our customers and valued ecosystem partners to make sure we focus on the areas that can make the most difference to clinicians’ daily working lives”.
Key areas of focus for integration will include patient record systems, patient communication platforms, and the Federated Data Platform, with Alertive hoping to help create “a more connected ecosystem” which offers clinicians access to the information they need, when they need it, to promote faster and “more informed” decision making.
Taking to LinkedIn, the company shared an update thanking their investors and partners for “helping make our vision of a more connected healthcare system a reality”.
Patient engagement and communication
We were joined by expert panellists last year for a HTN Now webinar exploring considerations for successful patient engagement, approaches and experiences, technical considerations, integration, change management and more. John Kosobucki (CEO and founder of OX.DH) noted the friction that can often be found in day-to-day activities, and highlighted the role that digital can play in removing this and supporting a “well-defined flow” to information coming in. “It can enable automation in retrieving additional information, and bring everything together in one place,” he said.
University Hospitals of Derby and Burton NHS Foundation Trust upgraded its unified communications platform in order to modernise disparate legacy telephony systems, improve resilience and stability, and enhance user experience. The platform is delivered from the Cinos Cloud with the aim of providing the trust with the “flexibility and robustness” required to adopt new hybrid working practices. The switchboard solution will offer always-on communication and an emergency telephone solution at both of the trust’s acute sites, so that key handsets within the trust can remain operational even in the event of an outage.
Last month, the Department of Health and Social Care proposed a new requirement for general practice to ensure patients can contact their surgery through electronic communications during core hours, as part of the “transition from analogue to digital in primary care”. The proposal comes as part of the new GP contract for 2025 – 2026 which has been backed by an “extra £889 million on top of the existing budget for general practice,” DHSC notes.
Don’t forget to join us for a webinar scheduled for 12 March, 10:00 – 11:00, focusing on some of the ways NHS trusts are currently utilising communication technologies. We’ll take a look at some examples of best practice, at the challenges around implementing new communication technologies across the health and care workforce, and at the benefits of digital for helping make operational improvements and improvements for patients.
