Cambridge trust deploys digital ditation technology

Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust (CPFT) has chosen BigHand’s digital dictation technology to help save time, increase productivity and improve timely delivery of care across the trust.

BigHand’s solution, which is currently being implemented in stages, has replaced the trust’s previous analogue tape-based method of recording and transcribing clinical notes.

The organisation, which provides mental health services, children's community services and learning disability care, chose the solution to speed up its workflow processes and ultimately improve patient care.

Gerhard Smith, project manager at the trust, said: “The initial stage of the rollout will constitute the bulk of the licenses and will range from clinicians and consultants to administrative staff. The next stage will see the rollout of additional licenses as required and, in parallel, we will start a pilot to trial speech recognition to further realise the full benefits offered by the systems.”

The new system, which includes a number of smartphone users, will see benefits including timely access to patient dialogue, monitoring and treatment plans using their mobile devices, helping the trust to deliver operational efficiencies and achieve associated cost savings as well as providing more personalised, real-time patient care.

Following the complete implementation, and once clinicians are seeing the benefits of the solution, the trust will look to introduce BigHand’s voice recognition technology to enable clinicians to compose written documents using their voice.

Smith added: “Ultimately, it’s the complete work cycle that we see will give us the biggest benefits and we are hoping for real cost savings once the voice recognition technology has been implemented. We hope for the complete integration to be realised over the next three years.”