Lancashire trust uses ‘Safer Hospitals, Safer Wards’ technology fund to improve efficiency and save money
Caradigm Intelligence Platform will help East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust improve efficiency with savings already estimated at £75,000
Following a successful pilot programme to automate its paper-based pre-operative assessment process within the orthopaedic outpatient clinic, East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust (ELHT) has signed a five-year contract with Caradigm to deploy its solutions trust-wide.
The pilot used the Caradigm Intelligence Platform and self-service kiosks to collect pre-op assessment data from clinicians and patients. It is envisaged the trial will result in a reduction in the number of cancelled operations due to inconsistencies in data which could result in a saving of approximately £75,000 a year.
Taking advantage of the ‘Safer Hospitals, Safer Wards’ Technology Fund, ELHT has decided to roll out the solution across all of its surgical outpatient clinics, helping the trust to achieve Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt’s, paperless NHS ambition by 2018.
The Caradigm Intelligence Platform will help support ELHT to improve clinical and operational performance by addressing the inefficiencies resulting from multiple legacy systems, which did not integrate effectively. One of the key challenges faced by the trust was the ability to get an overall view of pre-operative assessment schedules. ELHT needed a solution that enabled them to take their paper-based workflows and automate them to provide a full view of all data across the trust.
Emma Birchall, the trust’s associate director of IM&T, said: “We wanted a ‘best of breed’ application that can aggregate clinical data from systems across the trust and present it in one view. We were already using Caradigm’s Single Sign On and Context Management solutions, so in October 2012 we approached them to explore how they could help us further.
“We needed to ensure the technology would address our key challenges and that it complemented our existing systems before committing to a trust-wide deployment. The pilot has been very well received by clinicians and other service users. As well as helping us to move a step closer to improving efficiencies and achieving our e-health strategy, we are also expecting improvements in quality and financial savings.”
Richard Craven, vice president and managing director for Europe at Caradigm, added: “The Caradigm Intelligence Platform will enable trusts such as ELHT to improve operational efficiency and care delivery, as well as support the move towards a digitised NHS. Most importantly, it provides a platform to transform care through the strategic use of existing data assets sitting within the trust’s clinical applications and infrastructure.
“Data liquidity across the organisation and the consolidation of data into manageable lists, workflows and views will enhance the value of the data that is collected across all of systems and applications at ELHT. This data will power rich analytics that will enable the trust to gain deeper insight into individual patients, patient populations, quality and performance measures; to better predict outcomes; and to rapidly identify the actions needed to improve clinical and operational performance.”
