Here are our finalists for the category of Major Project Go Live.
Altera Digital
Overview: Bolton NHS Foundation Trust Sunrise EPR go-live: elevating digital maturity for enhanced patient care and operational excellence in the emergency department.
Why? Bolton is one of the North West’s busiest NHS Foundation Trusts, serving a population of 320,000. Recognising the benefits that digitisation can provide to operational efficiency, patient care and experience, the trust set the goal of digitising the entire patient journey from the Emergency Department (ED) through to community services.
What happened? By configuring its Sunrise™ EPR to meet its specific needs, the trust enabled a 19 percent reduction in length of stay in the Acute Medical Department. Before the implementation of Sunrise™ EPR, staff relied on paper systems, facing issues like missing charts, illegible writing, duplicated data entry, and incomplete medical history. Administrative tasks were time-consuming, potentially leading to delayed ward transfers and discharges, longer hospital stays and reduced patient satisfaction. Taking a phased approach to EPR deployment, the system was configured to the specific needs of ED. Successful implementation hinged on a meticulous training programme, with group training sessions, online modules, one-to-one sessions and video guides. Superusers including specialty leads were identified, ensuring thorough clinical input during the go-live phase.
Looking ahead. Sunrise™ is now live across 50 percent of the trust and is preparing to roll-out across its community care sites.
County Durham & Darlington NHS Foundation Trust and Imprivata
Overview: County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust and Imprivata’s collaborative approach to new healthcare systems rollout ensures project success.
Why? Working with unintegrated systems was adding to pressure and frustrations, and clinical workflows were not efficient as staff had to log in and out of multiple systems.
What happened? Based on workshops, the clinicians, CDDFT IT team, and the technology providers worked together to design a solution tailored to the specific needs of the trust. The trust team chose a ‘big bang’ implementation, and the testing phase of the project brought everyone together on site in August 2022, with the clinical teams testing the integrated workflows that encompassed solutions from across the multiple vendors. The project go-live went ahead as planned in October 2022. The go-live for community sites was planned over a couple of days, focusing on acute and sub-acute sites to begin with. Patient data and multiple systems are now integrated into a single solution which delivers a more accessible, single view of the patient. With 600 daily users of the mobile devices the Imprivata solution has demonstrably removed barriers. Clinicians now tap a hand-held device with their badge and enter their PIN or password to log in to the rest of the applications.
Looking ahead. Following the success of its collaborative project approach, CDDFT is continuously evaluating how to make existing clinical workflows more efficient and how technology solutions can support existing and new workflows.
North East London NHS Foundation Trust (NELFT)
Overview: NELFT’s virtual wards proposition is underpinned by system-wide collaboration between health and care providers in the region, aiming to enhance patient care, streamline discharges, and optimise hospital capacity, setting an example for personalised, efficient healthcare delivery.
Why? Government targets require NHS trusts to provide 40-50 virtual ward beds per 100,000 people. This has led many organisations to hastily implement add-on solutions, sacrificing future sustainability and necessary integration, and causing issues like bed blocking and readmissions.
What happened? NELFT decided to take a long-term, integrated approach to virtual wards, uniting a diverse range of stakeholders from acute and primary care providers to community health services and local authorities. By fostering collaboration, NELFT addressed capacity challenges but also lay the groundwork for a more resilient, patient-focused model of care for the future. The trust worked with their supplier to innovate with their existing technology. Real-time visibility dashboards and the integration with the Access Rio EPR demonstrate how the trust has adapted the model to their specific needs. The project has prioritised the seamless transfer of information between systems, for example between the patient flow solution and the EPR. It enables all the necessary information for discharge to be collated in 15 minutes, improving patient flow and reducing bed blocking. The trust expects to increase the number of patients served on a virtual ward by 300 percent, having gone from five to 15 beds within the first month.
Looking ahead. The desire is to now utilise the virtual ward and remote monitoring offer for admission avoidance within the respiratory pathway.
Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust
Overview: Working in co-production with patients to create an interactive patient platform to support delivery of personalised care and support, namely holistic needs assessment.
Why? To improve efficiency by providing a sustainable single point digital solution across all nine cancer sites as part of a trust-wide merger, keeping patients at the centre by adopting a “you said, we did” approach to service improvements.
What happened? Patient focus groups were conducted to learn more about patient needs, and an IT configuration analyst from the EPIC/MyCare team was secured to support and deliver the project. A working group including clinical and IT roles was formed, agreeing on steps to be taken, including the use of a single tool to be sent out electronically using the MyCare/MyChart patient portal and enabling visibility of previous patient encounters for HNA to support conversations. A pilot phase was agreed across two cancer sites for two months, and a feedback session supported adaption of the tool in the working environment. Planned educational sessions took place on three consecutive mornings in preparation for wider go live, and all sites implemented the digital tool for patients signed up to MyCare. Findings showed that patients felt listened to and engaged, patient experience was improved, and there was an increased update of HNA from 33 to 67 percent. For staff, HCP’s were engaged and proactive in shaping the tool, and maximised use of patient face-to-face time with patients placed in time-managed clinics.
Looking ahead. The trust hopes to continue to better support patients whilst sharing learnings and the tool with the Peninsula Cancer Alliance, working on implementing a digital solution to End of Treatment summaries.
Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust
Overview: Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust, working with Healthcare Communications, has implemented an innovative digital communications programme; redesigning its patient communication portal, implementing waiting list validation and transitioning to digital letters.
Why? To improve patient care and experience, increase appointment capacity and reduce DNA rates, while advancing the trust’s goal to become the NHS’s first net-zero carbon healthcare system.
What happened? Following consultations with patients and staff from administrative and clinical teams, the patient engagement portal was developed with Healthcare Communications, starting a programme that now encompasses every relevant outpatient specialty in the trust. The new digital processes available through the portal seamlessly integrate with the NHS app, allowing patients to access self-care information alongside their own appointment information. The portal facilitates easy appointment management, supports 100+ languages, and features for visually impaired users such as text enlargement and colour adjustments. Patients are now able to receive outpatient correspondence within the portal and initiate follow-up appointments directly with on-boarded services. Eliminating paper letters saves the trust approximately 56,000 sheets of paper monthly, equating to a financial saving of £10,200 in postal costs, and more than 16,000 patients are now registered for the patient portal, with around 9,800 appointments added to digital calendars each month as reminder prompts aid the reduction in non-attendance rates.
Looking ahead. By automating processes, enhancing accessibility and boosting patient engagement, the trust hopes to continue to achieve substantial cost and time savings while raising the bar for patient experience.
Dartford & Gravesham NHS Trust
Overview: DGT’s ePMA Big Bang Go-Live was highly successful, switching over 8000 prescriptions from paper to ePMA in one weekend. The go-live improves medication safety and efficiency, and sets the bar for digital transformation at DGT.
Why? There were three key drivers for the project: making medicines processes safer, faster, and fit for the future; reducing medication error risk; and releasing staff time to care.
What happened? A big bang approach was selected for the ePMA rollout, launching it simultaneously across 18 wards over a single weekend. A dedicated team of pharmacy technicians, pharmacists, doctors, and non-medical prescribers worked tirelessly to ensure every patient’s medication record was accurately transcribed into the new system. A critical factor in the successful implementation was the rapid training and deployment of digital super-users, and the development of a brand new team of digital clinical practitioners, as part of the trust’s overall #DigitalHeroes programme. Ahead of the go-live, 90 percent of staff completed their eLearning ‘theory test’, ensuring readiness to use the new system. As well as the core ePMA system, the go live included additional functionalities including a new improved eDN system with single-click transfer of medicines and imaging reports from inpatient records to the discharge letter, and a new digital risk assessment for venous thromboembolism (VTE) which will help us to further reduce the risk of hospital-acquired VTE.
Looking ahead. The trust welcomes this significant milestone in its digital transformation, and hopes that the new ePMA will continue to help DGT to deliver care that is safer, faster, and fit for the future.
Liverpool Women’s NHS Foundation Trust
Overview: A new Intranet solution went live in August 2023 following an 11-month development project, led by the communications team at Liverpool Women’s NHS Foundation Trust.
Why? With poor user interface and functionality, the previous Sharepoint-based Intranet had reached its end of life and was a risk due to governance and maintenance issues – it was no longer covered by Microsoft security updates.
What happened? The development of the Intranet was delivered in stages with a dedicated Intranet Project Working Group established at Liverpool Women’s Hospital (LWH), along with engagement support from Cube to ensure that staff across the trust were involved in decision making. Steps taken included user engagement and focus groups, content audit and planning, deploying a development server and installing a CMS, in-page testing, third party API integration, and user management and reporting system design and development. Feedback has been extremely positive since go-live, with extensive personalised features for staff including remote and mobile access, multiple content editor functionality, a live policy and guidelines library, and a login process via the trust’s active directory. Some of the key statistics since go-live include 190,000 sessions August 2023 to June 2024, and an average of 16,000 staff sessions per month. Since go-live there have been further enhancements to the Intranet including the installation of the Reachdeck accessibility tool to allow users to tailor content and the layout to meet their personal preferences.
Looking ahead. The communications team is also exploring the possibility of selling advertising space on the Intranet as an income generator for the trust and to help off-set some of the annual hosting and support running costs for the Intranet.
North West London Pathology
Overview: In 2023, North West London Pathology completed a six-year-long network transformation project, replacing multiple legacy lab management systems with a single solution.
Why? Disjointed and outdated lab systems within the newly formed NWLP network were struggling to keep up with demand, with multiple incompatible LIMS running across seven lab sites, siloed teams, and increasing costs associated with maintaining and interoperating four end-of-life LIMS systems simultaneously.
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 and 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 two to four-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.
Next up: browse the entries for the category of Most Promising Pilot here.
