EHI Awards 2016 reflect innovation and progress of health IT in NHS

The tenth anniversary ehi Awards, organised by Informa Global Exhibitions, have paid tribute to an extraordinary array of talent in the NHS who are attempting to bolster efficiency and patient care with state-of-the-art IT initiatives.

The health industry’s only dedicated IT awards provide a snapshot of what is happening across the UK and help drive forward changes in the industry through a healthy dose of competition. The awards also acknowledged the efforts being made to ensure NHS England’s target of making the NHS paperless by 2020 is met.

A record 210 entries were received this year, which the judges had to narrow down to three finalists for each category. The winners were announced in London on 29 September at an event hosted by comedian Ruby Wax.

• The CCIO award for clinical informatics leadership was won by Dr Masood Nazir, GP and chief clinical information officer at NHS Birmingham CrossCity CCG.
• Picking up the award for Best use of IT to support integrated healthcare services was King’s Health Partners and Lambeth and Southwark NHS Clinical Commissioning Groups.
• Scooping the excellence in healthcare business analytics was the Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh NHS Foundation Trust.
• The Digital NHS trust or health board of the year was Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust and the University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust was honoured for best use of IT to support clinical treatment and care.
• In the healthcare and IT product innovation category, the Academic Unit of Elderly Care and Rehabilitation, University of Leeds; Institute of Applied Health Research, University of Birmingham; ResearchOne; TPP; SystmOne; Faculty of Health Studies, University of Bradford, all ran out winners for their work on the development, validation and implementation of an electronic Frailty Index.
• South West London Pathology and Orion Health were victorious in the best use of IT to support healthcare business efficiency and the best use of IT to promote patient safety award was handed to NHS Fife.
• The excellence in mobile healthcare award was picked up by South Central Ambulance Service (SCAS), Ortivus and Quicksilva.
• Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust and Propagator took the award for the best use of technology to share information with patients and carers.

The chairman of the judges was Charles Gutteridge the former national clinical director of the National Programme for IT, who for the past three years has been driving IT at Barts Health NHS Trust, working as its chief clinical information officer. ‘The awards are a great way of bringing people together, both judges and competitors, and enabling them to make connections,’ he said. ‘They share ideas and talk and obviously there is a healthy element of competition that helps to drive change.’

The awards are a curtain-raiser to ehi LIVE, which takes place at Birmingham’s NEC on 1-2 November, where leading technology providers showcase their cutting-edge wares to those responsible for IT provision in healthcare.