Onto the next category, exploring the finalists showcasing the Best Use of Digital for NHS Trusts.
Altera Digital Health UK
Overview: Altera Digital Health seeks to reshape the healthcare landscape through its emphasis on innovation, cost-effectiveness and customer satisfaction, offering flexible and adaptable solutions to enable incremental functionality to be added as requirements and resources evolve.
Why? Altera is committed to helping the sustainability of the healthcare system whilst maximising taxpayer money and accelerating digital maturity for NHS organisations.
What happened? Altera’s solutions have led to significant cost savings for NHS trusts; for example, the configuration of the EPR lists at Bolton NHS Foundation Trust has projected annual savings exceeding £3 million and Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has saved over £1 million in printing costs alone. When it comes to advancing digital maturity, Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital NHS Foundation Trust’s validation against HIMSS EMRAM Stage 7 demonstrates the trust meeting enhanced level of digital maturity and showcases how Altera has supported the trust in driving innovation and enhancing patient safety. Additionally, Altera supported Gloucester Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which previously had one of the lowest digital maturity ratings for a trust of its size, to significantly improve through solutions such as Sunrise EPR, a patient flow dashboard and EPMA.
Looking ahead. Altera continues to support NHS organisations to grow, succeed and reap the benefits of their work; in particular, Gloucester Hospitals is now aiming for HIMSS Stage 6 with continued support from Altera.
Access Health Support and Care (Access HSC)
Overview: Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust has integrated with Access HSC’s social prescribing tool with EPR to transform mental health services.
Why? The trust covers a wide geographical area including some of the UK’s most deprived communities, with community-based services deemed to be of great importance; however, a disconnect existed between health and community care with mental health clinicians unable to refer into Life Rooms, a service set up as a ‘social front door’ to provide support with issues such as loneliness and housing.
What happened? Mersey Care worked with Access HSC to integrate its Rio EPR system with a social prescribing tool, Elemental, allowing mental health professionals to refer patients to Mersey Care’s Life Rooms service directly through familiar Rio software. The interoperability of systems enables service users to be supported in a safe, well-governed way by a team at Life Rooms with specialist knowledge, whilst clinical teams would also have full oversight of case notes and the support that referred patients had utilised. To date over 1,396 individuals have been referred and over 2,000 social prescriptions co-produced. Surveys undertaken indicate that prior to the introduced interoperability of systems, the average amount of time spent meeting social needs of service users was 27 minutes per appointment; since having access to this service, the average time is eight minutes per amount. S97 percent of staff reported that they felt confident meeting social needs of service users and 91 percent felt it beneficial to access social prescribing notes through the EPR.
Looking ahead. 28 clinical teams across the region are now making referrals through the Rio/Elemental integration, with staff in Liverpool and Sefton recently been given access to the system. Life Rooms staff intend to use positive findings from the project to take the idea to more clinical teams nationwide.
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.
Orlo and Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust
Overview: Berkshire Healthcare Foundation Trust opted to utilise TikTok to target new, younger and hard-to-reach audiences with the aim of generating meaningful engagement and achieving core objectives around patient engagement, public education and supporting recruitment.
Why? The trust’s social media presence heightened during the COVID pandemic; the team saw this as an opportunity to reach out to more public in the community with social content as a way of spreading reliable information. The number of TikTok users in the UK is reportedly expected to grow to 16.8 million by the end of 2024, with almost 75 percent of 16-24-year-olds using it.
What happened? The trust runs campaigns on Facebook, X/Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram but TikTok has become the most engaged social platform since it was adopted in the past year, and it has been growing very quickly in comparison to other channels. Berkshire Healthcare has utilised Orlo’s social media management platform to schedule and manage posts across all channels, which includes features such as Social Listening (monitoring conversations about the trust or specific keywords) and a centralised approval system. Over the past year, the trust has run “hugely successful” campaigns on TikTok, working with different departments and creating videos such as ‘What to do if you have a diabetic hypo’, ‘signs of a stroke’ and ‘how to use an EpiPen’. The trust has registered 1,880 saves of video content, with a video on sepsis reaching around 339,000 people. In total, video content has reached around 435,000 TikTok users.
Looking ahead. The trust is committed to continuing its work with social media to reach audiences of all ages and generate meaningful conversations around health.
University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust
Overview: University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust is celebrating a milestone in their partnership with Netcall and e18 Innovation to validate their waiting lists, having successfully reduced the waiting list by 13 percent.
Why? Like the wider NHS, University Hospital Sussex faced a need to tackle waiting lists and sought to take an innovative approach using automation and a patient engagement portal to address the challenge and help provide timely patient care.
What happened? The trust recognised the benefits of validating waiting lists by removing patients who no longer wish to be seen, necessitating a way to communicate with patients in a fast and effective manner. They partnered with Netcall and e18 to help progress this initiative, with Netcall providing AI-powered tech to help process automation and customer engagement, and e18 Innovation providing intelligent automation solutions and services to support all aspects of UHSx’s automation programme. Netcall’s waiting list validation solution was implemented, which automates the process of contacting patients waiting for their first appointment with reminders sent via SMS, email and letters with QR codes. e18’s intelligent automation helped to manage responses and ensure data is processed back into the trust’s patient administration system. The approach has led to a response rate of over 80 percent and the removal of over 13 percent of patients who no longer wish to be seen from the waiting lists.
Looking ahead. UHSx is excited about the future possibilities that this technology could bring, and aims to look for ways to further enhance services through strategic partnerships.
Alertive
Overview: Alertive is a secure emergency communication platform designed to meet the critical needs of NHS trusts by enabling real-time collaboration among healthcare professionals, offering a platform currently utilised in 16 trusts and over 20 hospitals with the aim of addressing traditional communication challenges with innovative, efficient, and compliant messaging solutions.
Why? Healthcare settings often face communication bottlenecks due to outdated systems, with efficiencies causing delays in patient care, increasing staff stress, and hindering operational workflows. At the Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust, for example, 70 percent of incidents were attributed to communication failures.
What happened? Alertive’s platform is designed to integrate seamlessly with existing systems to help streamline processes and reduce delays, offering benefits around optimised assembly of care teams; advanced alerting capabilities; deep integration with clinical systems; and universal real-time collaboration. Results include Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals using Alertive to enable the triage of over 1,500 additional patients per month within the target of four hours, and the average alert response time at Hull University Teaching Hospitals decreasingly from 10 minutes to 2.2 minutes, with 69.4 percent of alerts receiving a response in 30 seconds and 76.39 percent of alerts received within 20 seconds. Imperial College Healthcare reported a 99 percent alert delivery rate within a minute, reducing the median response time to 42.8 seconds, and at Princess Alexandra, 63 percent of users reported saving up to one hour per shift. Doctors were said to save an average of 57 minutes per shift, nurses 65 minutes, and pharmacists 120 minutes.
Looking ahead. Alertive pledges that it is committed to continuous improvement and innovation, with further developments to include enhanced AI-driven analytics to help predict and prevent communication bottlenecks, expanded integration capabilities with new clinical systems, and increased customisation capacity.
Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust
Overview: Agile digitisation of maternity care to maximise patient benefit at Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust in partnership with Healthcare Communications.
Why? With deadlines mandating the digitisation of services by 2023/2024 and the implementation of an EPR by March 2025, there was an urgency for Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust to act.
What happened? In collaboration with Healthcare Communications, the trust developed a digital clinical document specifically for expectant mothers, to ensure they have immediate access to essential pregnancy information during emergencies. Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust leveraged the Healthcare Communications (HC) Patient Engagement Portal for the project as it was already well-integrated across various services within the trust. This ensured a swift and reliable rollout of the digital document. The project included transitioning to digital appointments, allowing patients to view appointment letters on their smartphones. Patients could confirm, cancel, or rebook appointments digitally. The project went live on 23 January 2024, and by the end of March 2024, 672 patients had their maternity profiles readily available, with clinicians across the UK having access to these profiles to assess risks and make informed decisions regarding patient care, and automation of digital-first appointment letters saving significant admin time, allowing staff to focus more on patient care.
Looking ahead. The project demonstrates an agile approach to digital transformation that will see the trust rapidly expanding digitised services in a stepped approach ensuring the maximum benefits are realised from the outset.
VerseOne Group
Overview: With VerseOne, the Royal Surrey County Hospital transitioned to a secure maternity portal, saving £20,000 annually, enhancing the user experience, increasing income and supporting future growth and better patient care.
Why? The Royal Surrey County Hospital’s maternity service faced high costs and security issues, using third-party systems for course bookings and parent engagement.
What happened? A maternity portal was developed that could be accessed directly on the trust’s website. Users would be able to see personalised information and recommendations around their antenatal journey based on their due date, and would be able to book onto relevant antenatal courses and access both free and paid for clinically-led education. By integrating the course booking system into the new platform, the trust eliminated the need for Eventbrite, thereby saving Royal Surrey £20,000 annually. The new system allows payments to be processed within the platform, enhancing security and trust. This platform ensures that all communications and data are protected, giving users peace of mind about their privacy and data security, and offers personalised suggestions for courses and resources based on the user’s stage of pregnancy. This tailored approach helps users find relevant education, information and support, enhancing their overall experience. By integrating event and payment capabilities around their antenatal offering, the trust has been able to generate more income for their maternity service.
Looking ahead. The platform is designed with scalability in mind, with future phases to include the implementation of forums and additional interactive features, ensuring that the system can grow and adapt to meet evolving needs.
Consultant Connect
Overview: The Referral Triage and Validation service is safely reducing NHS Trusts’ elective care waiting lists, enabling faster and more enriched patient care.
Why? NHS England introduced a policy in 2013/14 stating that no one should wait more than 52 weeks from referral to first treatment. Since COVID-19, all specialties have seen a fall in performance, and none are currently meeting the referral-to-treatment standard due to the waiting list growing at a faster rate than patients are being treated.
What happened? Consultant Connect’s Referral Triage and Clinical Validation service uses the clinical expertise of out-of-area NHS consultants across 17 specialties from the National Consultant Network, to support with triaging and validating waiting list backlogs. Working remotely as ‘virtual locums’, once NHS consultants are allocated for triage, a clinical briefing meeting between them and the local clinical lead takes place. Following the clinical briefing meeting, the service is switched on at pace, often within a week from sign-off, quickly reducing clinical risk and improving patient care. It operates as a switch-on/switch-off model, so as local capacities change, the service can be increased, reduced, or turned off completely. As the service is delivered by consultants, the triage work results in a clinically validated and prioritised waiting list. To date, more than 60,000 referrals have been triaged across 20 NHS trusts in 17 specialties, with waiting lists reduced by 29 percent on average. At Kettering General Hospital, a project for 1,000 neurology referrals was completed in seven weeks, resulting in a 51 percent reduction in waiting list size.
Looking ahead. Consultant Connect plans to continue ensuring that GPs have access to immediate management plans, putting patients on the right pathways first time, expediting treatment, and prioritising waiting lists.
North West London Pathology
Overview: Driving efficiency and enhancing patient outcomes through pathology transformation.
Why? North West London Pathology had a serious problem; as a newly-formed pathology network built from the capabilities of three separate hospital trusts, interoperability and data visibility between sites was almost non-existent. Patients were unable to access the same test results at their GP, at hospital and through other healthcare providers.
What happened? Objectives included reducing touchpoints from multiple independent systems to a single harmonised system, enabling a one-size-fits-all training solution and staff interoperability between sites, along with providing access to test results for primary to tertiary care providers, including access for 200+ GP surgeries. An associate director of IT was hired with previous pathology network experience, and set about building a central, agile network team, combining resources from all three parent Trusts. Two ‘dry runs’ were carried out immediately prior to go-live, in which lab staff performed their normal duties over a 2-4-hour period on the new equipment. Over 100 staff consultations were held, and implementation was achieved in parallel to providing ongoing pathology services. 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. Patients now benefit from a holistic view of their pathology history at every level of care.
Looking ahead. NWL Pathology has been approached by organisations to assist in their implementation of similar solutions, and hopes to share learnings as widely as possible.
Inicio Health
Overview: Transforming the care of the NHS’s youngest patients with the infant jaundice inicioPage, which revolutionises patient care through cutting-edge digital charting.
Why? Despite the adoption of an EHR, the clinical team within the neonatal unit identified an unmet need relating to charting for hyperbilirubinemia, a critical biomarker to manage babies with jaundice.
What happened? MKUH and inicio health formed a collaborative partnership with the primary ambition of addressing the aforementioned unmet need, reducing clinical risk for babies whilst simultaneously reducing pressure on clinical teams via a real-time, integrated digital chart embedded within the EHR. This true clinical need led to the co-design of the hyperbilirubinemia inicioPage, incorporating key features required by the team, ensuring compliance with NICE guidance, and integrating directly into the electronic patient record to form part of the clinical history. The project recently passed the six-month mark, with the supporting data demonstrating that key objectives have been met regarding patient benefits, reduction in clinical risk, and widespread technology adoption. The project has received 6,800 views/interactions in the first six months, with 45 percent of cases managed being premature babies, with an estimated gestational age of <37 weeks. Enhancing data quality on the EHR, tests are now logged in the correct place to ensure that every test is captured and present on the digital chart. Remote access to the patient charts expedites care decisions.
Looking ahead. Inicio Health remains committed to leveraging technology to improve healthcare outcomes and staff experience at Milton Keynes University Hospital.
Next up: browse entries for the category of Best Use of Digital for Integrated Care Systems here.
