Building Better Healthcare takes a look at the latest technologies NHS Trusts have integrated into their systems to advance UK healthcare's digital evolution in August 2024.
This comes in the wake of the Independent Investigation of the National Health Service in England review conducted by Healthcare Expert, Lord Darzi.
In the review, Lord Darzi stated that "digital maturity is still low across much of the NHS,” hindering productivity and patient care.
Lord Darzi suggested that data integration could enable a shift in the model from ‘diagnose and treat’ to ‘predict and prevent’
However, Building Better Healthcare's September round-up is filled with NHS trusts and health boards integrating digital platforms to implement preventative measures, one of the points Lord Darzi made in the review.
Lord Darzi suggested that data integration could enable a shift in the model from ‘diagnose and treat’ to ‘predict and prevent’, allowing clinicians to make better-informed decisions.
The Trusts and companies that have made partnerships are:
- Frimley Health and Care Integrated Care System
- Graphnet
- Bolton NHS Foundation Trust
- Alcidion
- Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust
- XARlabs
- NHS England
- Better
- The Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust
- Secure I.T. Environments
- Somerset Integrated Care Board
- IEG4
- Birmingham and Solihull Integrated Care Board
- Access Elemental
- NHS Birmingham and Solihull Clinical Commissioning Group
- X-on Health
Security and compliance
NHS Digital has renewed Node4, the cloud-led digital transformation Managed Services Provider's (MSP) Health and Social Care Network (HSCN) certification for a seventh consecutive year.
Node4’s retained HSCN Stage 2 compliance status confirms that it has passed the audit process covering its detailed solution and service management design and is successfully connected to the HSCN Core Services.
The HSCN certification ensures we comply with stringent security standards
This means that Node4’s UK-based data centres can continue to supply the country’s health and social care sector, both private and public providers, with a range of integrated healthcare-specific network and connectivity solutions, which are all designed to improve system performance and deliver transformative patient care.
Remote monitoring
Frimley Health and Care Integrated Care System worked with Graphnet, a UK-based healthcare software provider, to develop locally-owned population health management tools.
These tools combined with Johns Hopkins risk stratification algorithms enabled residents in the highest Patient Need Groups (PNGs) to be offered remote monitoring and a rollout to these patients began in December 2022.
The report from Strategia confirmed the potential of Frimley Health’s remote monitoring programme for patients with multiple long-term medical conditions and frailty
The Johns Hopkins Adjusted Clinical Group (ACG) System is a risk stratification algorithm that categorises patients into low, medium, or high-risk groups for healthcare utilisation.
Since the programme launched in 2022, Frimley Health and Care Integrated Care System enrolled over 8,000 patients in its remote monitoring programme.
Graphnet aims to help the NHS move from treating to preventing illness.
Patient flow system
Bolton NHS Foundation Trust has deployed Miya Flow, a patient flow system by Alcidion, a healthcare technology company.
Miya Flow went live across Royal Bolton Hospital at the end of May. The system uses journey boards to show live bed status and helps clinical and operational teams to understand where patients are in their hospital journey – from admission to discharge.
Finding ways to enable more efficient patient flow, and to reduce avoidable longer lengths of stay, is more important than ever in the NHS
Improved transparency is removing the need for patient flow teams to manually phone wards to identify capacity, and is supporting staff as they manage efficient admission, care, and discharge of patients.
Mixed reality
Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust is using XARlabs’ simXAR mixed reality tool, which was developed independently by a registrar at the Trust when he was part of the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme, prior to joining the Trust.
This marks a significant shift from the traditional method of viewing scans one series at a time on 2D computer screens
The surgeon can interact with the 3D model by zooming in, rotating it, or even ‘walking’ inside to visualise the patient’s anatomy in an immersive and easily understandable way.
This marks a significant shift from the traditional method of viewing scans one series at a time on 2D computer screens. The team believes this represents an innovative way of viewing medical imaging that can significantly benefit both patients and health professionals in the NHS.
National Record Locator integration
The Universal Care Plan (UCP), OneLondon’s shared care planning solution powered by Better, a digital health platform, has in the last year integrated with the NHS National Record Locator (NRL) and the NHS App, while also extending the care plan support for people with sickle cell disease.
These latest developments within the solution, which spans five integrated care boards are helping to further integrate care, improve patient outcomes, and drive up engagement, in some cases at record-breaking levels.
These integrations mark a significant step forward in delivering person-centred care and ensuring equitable access to healthcare services
Data centre maintenance
Secure I.T. Environments (SITE), a UK-based design and build company for modular, containerised, and micro data centres, has completed an air conditioning upgrade project on the main mission-critical data centre at Royal Free Hospital, part of the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust.
The project was commissioned to replace “End of Life” cooling infrastructure and improve the energy efficiency of the data centre.
The project was commissioned to replace “End of Life” cooling infrastructure and improve the energy efficiency of the data centre
Originally built in 2010 by Secure I.T. Environments, the data centre serves Royal Free Hospital’s thousands of patients receiving acute and specialist services, including hundreds of transplant patients, as well as supporting the training of hundreds of medical students every year.
End to end platform
Somerset Integrated Care board has selected IEG4 to implement a comprehensive digital Continuing Healthcare (CHC) platform, aimed at streamlining their All Age Continuing Care (AACC) process throughout NHS Somerset and boosting the capabilities of the department.
The CHC solution the UK-based software company provided Somerset Integrated Care Board will meet its requirement for a platform that can be accessed by both staff and patients and referral forms which can be digitised and automated.
NHS Somerset faced challenges with its platform that demanded extensive manual input, particularly with staff entering data into property fields
Previously, NHS Somerset faced challenges with its platform that demanded extensive manual input, particularly with staff entering data into property fields.
Social prescribing platform
Birmingham and Solihull Integrated Care Board (ICB) has implemented Elemental, a new digital social prescribing service from the Access Group, a UK-based software company.
By introducing the solution the ICB no longer relies on spreadsheets and paper forms dispersed across providers to capture and manage referrals, speeding up the process and helping more people access services.
Having all the information in one platform also means cases can be tracked effectively for better continuity of care
Individuals can also log into the platform and self-refer at a time that suits them and without seeing a GP in person.
Having all the information in one platform also means cases can be tracked effectively for better continuity of care. It will also be used for population health management across the ICB, which has one of the largest and most culturally diverse localities in England.
Telephony system
Hall Green Health is situated within the NHS Birmingham and Solihull Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and delivers General Medical Services (GMS) to a patient population of approximately 28,500.
The system was set up within 15 minutes and has already had a notable impact on our appointment management
In March 2024, they introduced ‘Check and Cancel’ to their Surgery Connect Cloud-telephony system to improve appointment access. The software is by X-on Health, a UK-based telecom service provider.
This initiative aimed to streamline appointment management, allowing patients to verify or cancel their appointments easily, thus increasing efficiency and patient satisfaction.