We are pleased to share our finalists for the Health Tech Awards 2022 in the category of ‘best solution for clinicians’:
Nervecentre
Overview: Nervecentre EPMA provides a safe and efficient closed-loop mobile solution for clinicians, reducing medication errors and enabling clinical support to improve patient care. The mobile EPMA solution is being used at three NHS Trusts, with positive feedback from clinicians sharing a wide range of benefits.
Why? Nervecentre EPMA incorporates the NHS Dictionary of Medicines and Devices to standardardise information exchanges with prescribing systems in other care settings, saving time for clinicians and providing rapid access to support. It maximises familiar technology to help clinicians meet falsified medicines directive requirements and provides a simple, convenient functionality to improve end-to-end traceability of medicines and strengthen patient safety.
What happened? Nervecentre EPMA is being used at University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, Bedforshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Sherwood Forest Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. Benefits include saving time and increasing safety through the configuration of over 3000 dose sentences and protocols; creating greater visibility by configuring smart lists to facilitate collation of real-time information, and by introducing case notes functionality within the EPMA; and introducing a functionality to include case notes within the EPMA.
Looking ahead. Nervecentre look forward to more planned deployments for their EPMA system at UK hospital trusts over the next six months.
Mayden
Overview: Mayden’s electronic patient management software, iaptus, is codesigned with clinicians to help services deliver patient-centred, outcome-focused and data-driven care.
Why? iaptus aims to help the NHS cope with pressure by working to improve efficiency so that clincians can spend more time providing high quality care.
What happened? Mayden reached out to customers early in the pandemic and asked them what they could do to help. The overwhelming response was to set up more remote access tokens so that staff could work remotely from home, and to integrate video functionality into clinical record software so that care could be delivered remotely and securely by therapists. A team of Mayden staff were diverted to help services set up more remote users and issued free tokens to customers in need, and following development work, video consultation software was deployed to help customers deliver continuous, high quality care for patients. This functionality has allowed services to deliver 101,590 sessions last year alone. Recognising the potential of iaptus to support other types of service, Mayden reached out to staff and wellbeing services created to support NHS and social care workers throughout the pandemic and now supports 40 percent of these services.
Looking ahead. Feedback indicates 99.2 percent customer support satisfaction, showing how Mayden’s services support staff in continuing to deliver high quality care.
Sheffield Children’s Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and System C
Overview: Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust and System C have transformed communication between teams with CareFlow Connect.
Why? The mobile clinical communications system is designed to facilitate faster and safer care coordination for clinical teams within a hospital and across a care community.
What happened? CareFlow Connect was deployed in two wards per week, with ward managers, superusers, clinical educators and champions all contributing to a structured roll-out. All pre go-live training was conducted remotely through Teams do to the pandemic, with access to training materials such as short videos and a full recording of a training session via QR codes. A multi-media communications campaign raised the profile of CareFlow Connect to help internal and external audiences including patients and parents understand the trust’s digital journey. Early benefits have included the ability to update handover information in real-time, which improves accuracy, and better access to a wider range of handover information as CareFlow Connect’s handover feature incorporates situation, background, assessment and recommendation.
Looking ahead. With over 1000 users and over 3500 patients with handovers completed to care, CareFlow Connect continues to grow in popularity and contribute to better communication and collaboration. The trust’s overall objective is to make the adoption of CareFlow Connect mandatory in the future.
CCube Solutions
Overview: CCube Solutions has supported Milton Keynes University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust in integrating its electronic document and records management solution within its Cerner Millennium EPR to deliver a seamless, intuitive experience for all users.
Why? The integration allows 3800 staff members to gain immediate access to digital patient notes contained in the CCube EDRM, but viewed from within the Millennium EPR, so that they don’t have to log in and out of the two systems.
What happened? The hospital’s internal IT team worked closely with software developers at CCube Solutions for the project. Over 80 million scanned legacy patient records have been integrated and embedded in the EDRM system through the project. Clinicians now just press an EDRM tab added within the Millennium menu and a viewer immediately displays the patient’s record from the CCube system, making it easier and quicker for them to navigate all the digital notes of an individual. Notes are displayed in folders on screen covering appointment letters, correspondence and the results of clinical trials. This means that clinicians don’t have to have multiple screens open, which can be distracting and confusing.
Looking ahead. Milton Keynes are keen to provide input and information to other NHS organisations who are considering using CCube EDRM and Cerner Millennium and are considering integrating both.
Midlands Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
Overview: Midlands Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (MPFT) piloted an electronic prescription system (EPS) with NHS Digital and CLEO Systems, digitising the paper process of sending prescriptions to pharmacies.
Why? The digitisation enables improved patient choice, increases patient safety and contributes to sustainability.
What happened? MPFT worked with NHS Digital and CLEO Systems to implement the EPS; before the EPS, clinicians were handwriting prescriptions and patients often had to travel to collect them. MPFT received feedback asking for a solution and used continual communications with clinicians and patient feedback to shape the direction of the EPR pilot. The pilot consisted of 24 prescribers using the system, which generated 1073 electronic prescriptions, avoiding postage and travel costs. Other services within MPFT were encouraged to see the EPS system and its benefits and these services were added to the deployment list to be on-boarded due to recognition of positive benefits. The pilot has resulted in reduction of time for clinicians in prescribing, travelling time, increased patient safety and removed potential risks such as lost or stolen prescriptions, or illegibility of handwriting.
Looking ahead. An interface is being created between EPS and the main clinical system following the pilot, to allow clinicians to have access to one record that will show all prescribing history.
NHS Shared Business Services
Overview: NHS Shared Business Services (SBS) developed a unique framework agreement bringing artificial intelligence software to stroke clinicians.
Why? 100,000 people suffer a stroke in the UK annually, resulting in 38,000 deaths. The framework agreement was developed to tackle this leading cause of death and disability, and to speed up the software and processes used in an area where rapid diagnosis is crucial.
What happened? Using AI in the analysis of stroke imagery can make a significant difference in providing rapid treatment for stroke patients, and in increasing capacity of stroke clinicians to interpret CT brain scans when selecting patients for interventions. NHS SBS set the goal of creating a viable commercial solution that removed barriers to its acquisition by de-risking procurement in a challenging marketplace and offering assurance to buyers across the health and care system. The team faced challenges (for example, dealing with evolving standards and requirements for AI and the NHS’s risk adverse culture), but overcame them. They worked with clinical leaders and strategic stakeholders, to create the unique, one-of-a-kind procurement framework ‘Artificial Intelligence Software in Neuroscience for Stroke Decision Making Support’.
Looking ahead. The framework is seen as an important mechanism in supporting trust and networks to access AI solutions and deliver optimal pathways for patients where a stroke is suspected.
Ethical Healthcare Consulting and KLAS Research
Overview: Ethical Healthcare Consulting and KLAS Research carried out the “largest usability survey ever” in the NHS over a ten-month period.
Why? The survey underpins the government’s levelling up agenda and enables local providers to baseline digital maturity and identify opportunities for future investments.
What happened? NHSX created the concept of the What Good Looks Like framework to share good practice for the use of digital technology. After discussions with Ethical Healthcare Consulting, NHSX agreed to use the usability survey as one of the ways to track the performance of the ‘supporting people’ measure of success in the framework. Ethical and KLAS were commissioned to manage and promote an EPR usability survey that would capture the views of healthcare professionals across acute, mental health, community and ambulance providers; the survey was conducted between July 2021 and May 2022, and asked clinical end-users about a range of topics including opinions on whether the EPR helped them do their job, system availability, response times, integration and more. The survey received more than 300,000 clinical responses from across over 275 organisations.
Looking ahead. NHS trusts can use data from the survey to make much-needed improvements in EPR usability, and the project is inspiring the creation of EPR usability communities.
Infinity Health and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust
Overview: Infinity Health and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust collaborated on the implementation of a task management solution for the out-of-hours (OOH) service.
Why? As part of the trust’s implementation of the NHS Seven Day Services Clinical Standards, concerned were raised about the OOH period, including patient safety, workload, poor staff morale and inappropriate tasks being sent to OOH doctors.
What happened? The trust quickly realised that a digital task management solution could improve efficiency and facilitate a more manageable, sustainable and safer role. Implementing Infinity’s solution aimed to reduce unnecessary administrative burden to free up clinical time, improve task management, support OOH staff to better manage their workload, and support the OOH Coordinator to triage, prioritise and allocate tasks. The OOH Coordinator now logs requests on Infinity and allocates them on the platform instead of using a spreadsheet and making calls; OOH staff can log in from anywhere and instantly see what needs to be done. Staff report improved experience, 62 percent report that it has reduced the risk of error, and each OOH staff member saves 91 minutes per shift on average.
Looking ahead. As well as supporting staff and making efficiencies, data gathered by Infinity is also helping the trust to understand the make-up of tasks and analyse resourcing requirements. Infinity has been recommended to the Patient Safety Board for implementation 24/7 on the wards.
iOWNAwHealth
Overview: Milton Keynes University Hospital has recently partnered with engagement tool iOWNA to transform clinician/patient interactions by facilitating a two-way exchange of information.
Why? Improving engagement between clinicians and patients helps the hospital to save time, makes it easier to know where patients are on their journey, and removes a lot of communication challenges. It also provides tailored and timely information for patients, improving their experience.
What happened? MKUH’s Rheumatology department has transformed manual, time-intensive processes by embracing the digital iOWNA solution, resulting in significant benefits for clinicians and for patients. The three-month pilot demonstrated a 15 percent saving overall in nursing time with an 80 percent reduction in nursing time spent on repetitive patient education, 70 percent reduction in time spent on patient information gathering, and 60 percent reduction in time spent on sourcing and distributing patient education documents. Tasks that previously required face-to-face meetings or individual phone calls can completed digitally and quickly through iOWNA’s processes.
Looking ahead. MKUH is continuing to enhance the clinician/patient relationship with planned expansions in aiding clinicians’ pre-clinic with digital forms, and iOWNA is currently integrating with MKUH’s EPR to make the process even more seamless.
Lancashire Teaching Hospitals
Overview: Working alongside Alcidion, Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust supported the acute medical team in moving from pagers to SmartPage, a digital mobile phone-based communication system.
Why? Smartpage allows clinicians to save administrative, making better use of time to see patients.
What happened? Lancashire Teaching Hospitals went live with Alcidion Smartpage in summer 2021 and since then a growing number of departments and clinicians have started to communicate via Smartpage. In June 2022, the trust went live with the non-clinical aspect of Smartpage too, as the Portering Services Team began to use it. The roll-outs, both clinical and non-clinical, have been led by and engaged with clinicians and portering service managers in order to make best use of the system to solve long-standing issues. Time and motion studies undertaken before and after clinical launch found that on a 12 hour on-call shift, a clinician was typically spending 20 minutes locating a phone in order to return a bleep, and around 100 minutes returning calls. Smartpage allows clinicians to save two hours per shift on admin, and across a 24-hour period teams are saving around 16 hours. Clinicians reported improvements in communication and handover tasks, and the auditable nature of Smartpage allows wards to review pages and responses, supporting trust reporting and resource allocation.
Looking ahead. Previously hard-to-contact areas around the trust have asked to be considered for future Smartpage roll-outs as they can see the benefits it would bring to their team.
