The Royal Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Basis Belief has launched into numerous impactful digital initiatives in recent times, with extra daring plans underway. Head of digital transformation on the belief, Gavin Newman, speaks completely to Digital Well being Information about a few of its key digital initiatives, challenges in digitising and objectives for the longer term.
A key partnership for the belief is with the UK’s main affected person engagement platform, DrDoctor. Again in 2019, work linking up the entire belief’s outpatient appointment messages started with use of DrDoctor’s platform, which “introduced the DNA price down drastically inside a few weeks of turning that on,” Newman mentioned. All outpatient letters from the belief now go electronically, the place doable, by way of the DrDoctor portal.
Newman confirmed that in 2023 the belief had superior once more, turning into the primary specialist acute belief to hyperlink in with the Wayfinder venture, which entails connecting to the NHS App, one thing these on the belief are “fairly pleased with”.
He added: “It was actually key to the way in which that issues are being pushed in the intervening time, to get your affected person dealing with purposes linked in to the NHS App the place doable, in order that there’s a single entrance door into their specific care.”
Different digital initiatives Newman highlighted included digitising pre-op. Previous to this, sufferers would are available and need to fill in an enormous booklet about their present standing, what medicine and drugs they have been taking and their well being historical past.
“We digitised that pathway,” Newman defined. “We introduced an answer in that allowed them to finish that electronically and the information then populates a portal the place our clinicians and healthcare employees can view the outcomes so any omissions or something that’s lacking might be adopted up. It saves time for the affected person in order that’s been an enormous initiative.”
The belief additionally linked up all its knowledge to the Birmingham and Solihull Shared Care Report. It’s feeding knowledge into it however not but consuming the information, with Newman confirming that the belief is because of go stay with its entry to the SCR later this month.
Newman added that the belief is “in a headspace of steady enchancment” the place “we ship issues after which we sit again and observe, see the advantages after which we redesign or redevelop once more and enhance it additional”.
Digital transformation obstacles
The Royal Orthopaedic Hospital’s head of digital transformation famous that “digital transformation has turn out to be considerably of a buzzword” within the final couple of years, however with the introduction of a lot of new expertise, “the most important problem is remembering that it’s all about getting the fundamentals proper”.
“We are able to’t take our eyes off the truth that we have to make issues simpler for our clinicians and our sufferers,” Newman mentioned. “I believe we’ve obtained to maintain monitor of the truth that we’ve obtained to maintain the lights on, we’ve obtained to offer good infrastructure, good Wi-Fi, good connection, good gadgets for individuals to work on and good communication to our sufferers to entry our companies.”
“I believe that’s the place the struggles will lie, in weighing up the necessities of the brand new and glossy issues in opposition to the preserving the lights on,” he added.
Newman additionally shined a light-weight on present workforce challenges inside the NHS and the necessity to recruit and prepare extra digital well being consultants. “We’ve obtained nice talent set however are there sufficient skilled, expert, digital and technical consultants out there in the intervening time? No, and the demand far outstrips capability,” he mentioned.
“I believe that is throughout all NHS trusts, I don’t suppose I’m talking for simply ours. It’s a reality of the matter that we’re nonetheless awaiting a digital workforce plan by way of how we’re going to deal with the transfer to digital that’s anticipated of us, and it’ll be a problem for our belief. We’ve obtained actually good intentions and the folks that we’ve got are wonderful, I simply want we had extra of them,” Newman admitted.
The dream of the longer term
As one of many key figures in driving digital change at The Royal Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Basis Belief, Newman instructed Digital Well being Information that “the dream of the longer term can be to have a single supply of reality in a system from the primary referral by to discharge and thru to follow-up care”.
Having a “single supply of reality of affected person knowledge” which might be accessed it doesn’t matter what your function is from one login reasonably than disparate methods can be vastly impactful for the belief in response to Newman.
“I believe convergence actually applies with us by way of it might be nice if our clinicians can simply log into one system, it might be a sport changer and an EPR would offer that for us,” he mentioned.
Newman concluded: “I’m assured and I’m excited for the longer term about the place we may go as a result of the artwork of the doable appears wonderful for our belief. We already excel at care and to get a system that solely enhances that will elevate us up one other stage. However we’re already good and nice at what we do.”