Why personalised care must go beyond ‘patient-centricity’

By Dr Rob Simister

Dr Rob Simister, Clinical Director for Stroke and Acute Neurology, University College London Hospitals (UCLH) NHS Foundation Trust, writes about how digital platforms can help personalise stroke care, leading to better outcomes for patients and carers.

‘Personalised care’ is a term that has become ubiquitous, and something that the NHS has been striving to achieve for some time. As an NHS consultant, I understand the aim of personalised care to be the provision of a care programme that is tailored to the specific needs of each patient, and delivers better outcomes and a better life experience.

This ambition to create a personalised recovery pathway for survivors of medical emergencies, such as stroke, is critical. Such patients will have specific patterns of injury, risk factors, treatment programmes and rates of recovery. Each patient also brings with them a specific life history, expectations and hopes for the future. We can only help individuals to recover in the best way possible if we take all these elements into account. The challenge is the delivery of this personalised care across the wider patient group, and so far, we have struggled with this.

This is where technology can make a huge difference. By creating bespoke packages of support, we can equip patients, their families and carers with information pertinent to the event and help them understand what to expect throughout their recovery journey and how to manage their health and reduce the risk of secondary stroke in the future. Critically, this can be done at scale.

Personalised information is personalised care

Annually, 15 million people worldwide suffer a stroke and it is one of the most common causes of death. There are approximately 1.3 million stroke survivors in the UK and many more family members living with the sudden, unplanned and life-changing consequences of stroke.

Stroke occurrence is associated with a number of modifiable and unmodifiable risk factors. Lifestyle choices, weight, and compliance with medications and environment factors are all potentially modifiable. However, we need to ensure that everyone has access to the right information presented in an accessible way, something which remains challenging particularly for minority groups and people who are socially disadvantaged. We need to ensure that this information takes account of unique experiences, background, spoken language and life challenges. This is essential in helping more people to understand their stroke and improve their recovery outcomes.

Filling the gap

To try to bridge this gap, I have been involved in the development of a digital platform called My Stroke Companion. This technology offers patients a visual and interactive support package of information, which is specific to their type of stroke, risk factors and treatment plans. While the information provided is designed to be as accessible and as easy to understand as possible, it crucially helps the patient to answer: why did this stroke happen to me? What does my recovery look like? How do I prevent it from happening to me again?

Accessible content is especially important in conditions such as stroke, where patients can struggle to take in information due to tiredness or fatigue, or difficulties processing information. This is even more difficult for patients who also experience language barriers or have pre-existing communication needs.

We are currently piloting My Stroke Companion with 500 patients – the first pilot of its kind to take place. Each patient has been given a personalised information prescription, which they can share with family members and carers, helping them to manage their condition. We have been really pleased to learn that, particularly in the earliest phase of recovery, some of the main beneficiaries of the support packages have been carers, who have valued the dedicated content that helps them to provide better care. This develops the idea of personalised care further – so that it is not just patient-centred, but also relevant and useful for carers and family who are also often deeply affected.

This positive impact could easily be replicated across other health conditions, such as cardiovascular disease and respiratory conditions, with development of these resources following a similar process of co-creation with patients, carers and digital specialists.

Better for patients, better for the NHS

Personalised digital support packages can also help trusts to create system efficiencies, which is especially crucial now that staff and services are so stretched. By providing information that can be accessed in the comfort of a patient’s home, it is possible for patients to have time to understand more deeply what has happened – and what will happen next. We hope this will lead to improved medication adherence, participation in therapy and in better lifestyle choices – leading to fewer recurrent events, less time in hospitals and better outcomes.

We also hope that the platform will help overstretched NHS clinicians by acting as a trusted resource for patients and carers, and so release this highly pressurised group to be more available for direct care delivery.

Digital personalised support offers an opportunity for the NHS to channel the right information to the right patients and help patients to gain more control over their condition after a life-changing health event.

Majority of public would use health tech to avoid hospital, research finds

By Integrated Care Journal

Survey highlights increasing public acceptance of healthcare technology to self-manage care and take greater individual responsibility for health.

The majority of people would use health technology if it meant they could avoid going into hospital, new research carried out by Ipsos on behalf of the NHS Confederation, supported by Google Health, shows.

The same proportion – more than 7 in 10 people (72 per cent) – would also use technology including wearable and health monitoring devices to help better manage and monitor their health and would also be willing to share the information and data gathered with their doctors and other medical professionals.

The survey of 1,037 members of the public highlights people’s increasing appetite for using technology to self-manage their care, and more broadly, to take greater responsibility for their health and that of their families.

Nearly 4 in 5 people (78 per cent) also said they would be happy to use different types of health monitoring equipment to help manage their health if an NHS professional recommended it to them, with nearly 9 in 10 (89 per cent) people aged over 75 willing to do so.

The results have also found that just over half (53 per cent) of the 92 people included in the survey who have been diagnosed with a long-term condition resulting in them interacting with the health service four or more times a year, are already using the NHS App to access personal health information, compared with one third (33 per cent) of the general population.

The government recently announced a target for patients at more than 90 per cent of general practices across the country to be able to use the app to see their records, book appointments and order repeat prescriptions by March 2024.

Commenting on the findings, Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation said: “This research shows the potential of technology in empowering patients to better manage and monitor their own health, especially if it means they can avoid being admitted to hospital.

“There is clearly an appetite amongst the public to use technology to self-manage their long-term conditions, and more broadly, to take greater responsibility for their health and that of their families.

“The government’s recent commitment to accelerate and widen the use of the NHS App should also help to strengthen the public’s understanding of the benefits of digital engagement.

“However, the decisions we make now as a society will determine whether technological change means we can make continuous improvement in the offer we make to everyone through the NHS, or whether it will divide ever more widely the ‘healthy haves’ from the ‘unhealthy have nots’. We must always deliver greater digitisation with equity in mind.”

Elsewhere, the survey findings showed that just over 8 in 10 (83 per cent) adults already use some form of technology to manage their health, and this increases to nearly 9 in 10 (89 per cent) people living with one or more long-term condition. However, only just over half of those surveyed were currently satisfied with the technologies and tools available for them at present.

The research also showed that that nearly three-quarters (73 per cent) of patients want their doctors to provide them with the “best technology available”, with three-fifths (58 per cent) wishing “their doctor provided them with technology to monitor their health”.

Ease of appointment booking and the ability to communicate via messaging services with healthcare teams are also high on the list of priorities. The research also found that more than two thirds (68 per cent) of people believe that healthcare in the future will include more technology and less reliance on healthcare professionals, although this comes with the concern that without access to the right technologies, access to healthcare could be limited.

Susan Thomas, UK Director, Google Health added: “Google Health has been privileged to partner with NHS Confederation and Ipsos to drive this piece of research; the findings have resonated with our mission to help everyone, everywhere be healthier through products and services that connect and bring meaning to health information.”

Number of repeat prescriptions ordered via NHS App up 92% in last year

By Integrated Care Journal

2.4 million repeat prescriptions were requested through the NHS App in April and more than 500,000 repeat prescriptions are now booked through the app every week.

New figures released by NHS England show that since the NHS App’s launch in December 2018, more than 42 million repeat prescriptions have been ordered through the app. In April 2023 alone, the NHS App enabled 2.4 million repeat prescriptions to be ordered, compared with 1.7 million in April 2022 and 393,000 in April 2021.

The latest figures represent a 92 per cent year-on-year increase in repeat prescriptions ordered via the app from 13 million in 2021/22 to 25 million in 2022/23. The increase comes ahead of the NHS’s milestone 75th birthday on 5 July, when the achievements and innovations of the NHS and its staff will be celebrated.

Patients across England were reminded of the benefits of using the NHS App to order repeat prescriptions, ahead of the upcoming bank holidays in May.

Chief Pharmaceutical Officer for England David Webb said “we are reminding people of the excellent benefits of the NHS App,” particularly in the context of May’s long bank holiday weekends limiting access to GPs.

Webb continued: “Patients can order repeat prescriptions through the app at a time and date convenient to them and access community pharmacy information about local healthcare advice and services available during the bank holidays.

“The NHS has always innovated and adapted to meet the needs of each generation and as we approach the NHS 75th birthday, the NHS App is yet another fantastic example of how we are doing this.

“The app offers a digital front door for interacting with the NHS with a host of new features launched in the last year– empowering patients to access services from the comfort of their homes. As ever, if you need care during the bank holiday weekend, come forward – using 999 in life threatening emergencies and NHS 111 online for other health concerns.”

Some of the features available on the NHS App enable patients to view their GP health record, nominate their preferred pharmacy, find local NHS services and get health advice via 111 online.

New and innovative features continue to be rolled out to help patients access convenient and high-quality care when and where they need it. Patients in many parts of the country are now able to view and manage their hospital appointments on the app, and many GP practices are now sending NHS App notifications to patients with appointment reminders and other messages relating to their care.

Health and Social Care Secretary Steve Barclay said: “Technology is transforming the way we deliver healthcare for patients, and I’m determined that the NHS App plays a vital role in this.

“Repeat prescription orders through the app have increased by 92 per cent in the last year – including 2.4 million in last month alone. This is freeing up valuable time for clinicians and helping people access services easily and conveniently from the comfort of their own homes.

“A host of new innovative features have also been rolled out– from viewing GP records to finding local health services – offering a digital front door to the NHS.”

The NHS App has now recorded more than 32 million sign-ups (as of April 2023).

More than 28 million of these have fully verified their identity through NHS login, which means they can now access a variety of digital healthcare services quickly and securely through the NHS App.

How the ICS can unify data and relieve elective care

By David Duffy

In taking decisive action to bring down elective care backlogs, Mid and South Essex Integrated Care System has demonstrated the value of industry collaboration – made possible by the new ICS construct.

With over seven million people on elective care waiting lists, unifying data strategies and enhancing visibility across health providers has never been more important. UK health and care transformation has long been hampered by historically fragmented approaches to data infrastructure and these complex vulnerabilities were laid bare nationally throughout the Covid-19 pandemic and the resulting aftermath.

With such vast numbers of people stranded on backlogs, providers need data infrastructure to illuminate patient waiting lists, to provide absolute clarity as to who is waiting for what and to ensure that those who are in most urgent need are prioritised.

“There are opportunities for a partnership-based approach to care reform, allowing innovators to innovate as part of a cross-sector team”

In many respects, the development of integrated care systems (ICSs) has been fortunately timed to deal with such an issue. Central to the population health mission of ICSs is integrating data strategies and overcoming the obstacles posed by legacy data systems. There is also an opportunity for a revitalised provider-supplier relationship – with the ICS onus on collaboration over competition, there are opportunities for a partnership-based approach to care reform, allowing innovators to innovate as part of a cross-sector team.

This is in part the mindset that has defined the approach from Mid and South Essex Integrated Care System (MSE) to deal with its own elective care backlogs. MSE is responsible for the care of 1.2 million people, across Basildon and Brentwood, Mid Essex, South East Essex and Thurrock. According to the latest referral to treatment data from NHS England, there were 153,000 people across MSE waiting for non-urgent surgery in August 2022. Like in many other systems, MSE’s backlog covers multiple disciplines and as such requires a multifaceted solution to aid with prioritising those in most urgent need while pushing for further optimisation wherever possible.

To meet this challenge, system leaders across MSE have harnessed the new ICS framework to lead a data led transformation. In May 2022, system leaders kickstarted a partnership with leading NHS data solution specialists, Insource Ltd, to combine data from three acute sites to optimise waiting list management across the MSE system.

Articulating the problem

The core objective of the project is one of visibility. Historically siloed approaches to health data infrastructure have left a fragmented data landscape across the NHS, and this is no different for MSE. Competing legacy Patient Administration Systems (PAS), used under the former CCG constructs, had made it more difficult for providers to develop holistic plans to deal with issues such as elective backlogs.

“You can’t address the backlog if you do not fundamentally understand the nature of the problem”

PAS systems support the automation of patient management across hospitals, allowing them to track patients and manage admissions, ward attendances and appointments and as such are crucial for managing waiting lists. “Tracking and managing patients along complex elective pathways is technically difficult even with one PAS. Today’s NHS needs to manage patients safely across several hospitals in one ICS, making that challenge even bigger,” says Dr Rob Findlay, Director of Strategic Solutions at Insource. MSE has three different PAS systems in use across its acute sites, as well as three different theatre systems.

Insource have begun implementing its data management platform to unify and enhance data visibility across these three hospitals, creating a unified data foundation for system wide recovery, and has now created a unified Patient Tracking List (PTL) across the MSE system. In layman’s terms, the PTL provides a single view for all clinicians and operational managers across the ICS, detailing exactly who is waiting for acute care, for how long, for which specialty and what their clinical priority is – allowing for those with the most urgent needs and those waiting longest to be treated first.

“You can’t address the backlog if you do not fundamentally understand the nature of the problem,” says Barry Frostick, Chief Digital and Information Officer for MSE, who has spearheaded the project alongside Dr Rob Findlay. Reflecting on MSE’s enhanced backlog visibility Rob says, “when the NHS approaches us with a problem, our goal is to help the system clearly think through the challenges and accurately articulate the nature of the challenges they are facing, this way, the potential solutions that could be applied start to become obvious.”

A strategic partnership approach

The size and scope of MSE’s backlog necessitates a truly collaborative approach that develops holistic solutions to reflect the needs of all stakeholders and voices. “The project so far has benefitted from a clear alignment between the provider and supplier. This relationship is far more of a partnership than your typical supplier-provider relationship,” says Barry.

“There is a rich level of intellectual engagement and respect for these challenges across MSE”

From an Insource perspective, this type of relationship allows for a much richer dialogue between provider and supplier – necessary to deal with complex data issues. As Rob explains, “from talking to consultants, medical staff, and managers, it is clear that there is a rich level of intellectual engagement and respect for these challenges across MSE – this engagement has been a hugely enjoyable and rewarding part of this project and has been central to its success so far.”

While Insource have decades of experience in unifying operational data, a system wide, automated PTL is new to the NHS and the fact that MSE have managed to implement such a solution after only being in official existence for a few months is a remarkable achievement. However, despite the initial success, neither Barry nor Rob are getting ahead of themselves – both insist that this is not “miracle working”, but rather harnessing the new ICS structure and laying strong groundwork though effective leadership to create a fruitful partnership.

How has the ICS enabled this change?

‘Partnership’ has become an oft-repeated term in the context of integrated care, so much so that it can at times become an abstract concept. But the relationship between MSE and Insource has already borne tangible, significant fruit in the form of a PTL that now acts as a “single source of truth” on waiting lists across the system. Progress has been down in part to the renewed ICS focus on collaboration over competition (the latter defined much of the approach taken by former CCGs toward industry partners).

“There’s a higher level of involvement and a much higher level of accountability than the commissioner function used to have”

The partnership ethos visible here is in part down to the new ICS structures. Previous provider/supplier relationships under the CCG structure were simply based on providing a service, “whereas today,” says Barry, “the ICS has allowed us to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our industry partners.”

For this project, the new ICS structure for MSE has allowed system leaders to take a step back from the day-to-day operational grind of service delivery. “The ICS acts as a critical friend to NHS services on the ground, making more impartial decisions, taking a step back and seeing the impact that a potential solution would have across the system” explains Barry.

Rob argues that the ICS is much closer to the frontline than the old commissioners were within CCGs, giving them “more skin in the game”. He says, “there’s a higher level of involvement and a much higher level of accountability than the commissioner function used to have. This allows us to harness the huge potential that the ICB has to intelligently bring together the different sectors, including the mental health, social, community and primary care sectors, as well as the acute sector, which tends to get the attention and is the initial focus”

Ultimately, the initial success of this project will be judged upon how MSE’s elective care backlog figures change over the coming months and years. However, with the new sense of visibility offered by the PTL – few could argue that its impact will be anything but positive. In fact, those closely involved in the project are already looking ahead. There is serious expectation that this new bank of centralised data, accessible system wide, will enable revolutionary improvements across the MSE system.

Digital Implementation May 27, 2022

How ICSs can help uproot risk aversion and progress innovation

By David Duffy

Kathy Scott, Chief Operating Officer and Deputy Chief Executive of the Yorkshire & Humber Academic Health Science Network (AHSN) and Aejaz Zahid, Yorkshire & Humber AHSN’s Director for the South Yorkshire ICS Innovation Hub, spoke with Integrated Care Journal on how the implementation of a dedicated innovation hub within ICS frameworks has helped to streamline innovation and improve patient care.

Integration and innovation are two increasingly prominent principles that are, in part, designed to address the growing problems of unmet health needs. Each is intended to supplement and support the development of the other.

Integrated care systems (ICSs) offer new frameworks through which innovation can be adopted at scale, streamlining past previous bureaucratic and individualistic barriers to change and adopting a transformation led approach. Innovation is crucial to turning the core aspirations of integrated care into tangible realties, to use technology and sophisticated approaches to data to help address the root causes of ill-health and expand health service offerings.

“There is a vast range of unmet need across the whole health and care sector”

The above outlines the core principles of integration and innovation, which can be found reiterated from a wealth of sources if one is to engage in the sector for even a few days. Integrated care is not a new concept and neither is innovation, so how are these two principles coming together to improve patient outcomes in reality?

“There is a vast range of unmet need across the whole health and care sector,” says Aejaz Zahid, Yorkshire & Humber AHSN’s Director for the ICS Innovation Hub at South Yorkshire & Bassetlaw Integrated Care System (SYB ICS). “Much of this is of course clinical, but a huge part of this more operational, system level needs.

“The ICS needs intelligence on all of this, but then must ascertain how it can use innovation to leverage economies of scale in terms of investing and finding solutions to those problems and challenges. What we are trying to do within the innovation hub is create straightforward and easily accessible processes which enable busy staff working on the ground to regularly bring those challenges and problems to our attention, while enabling ICS leadership to ascertain and prioritize needs that could benefit from a systemwide innovative solution.”

The ICS Innovation Hub is a single point of contact for health and care innovators in the SYB region. The hub works, via the AHSN, to identify and validate market ready innovations and help drive improved health outcomes, clinical processes and patient experience across the SYB health economy. The idea to set up a dedicated innovation hub within an ICS was developed by the Yorkshire & Humber Academic Health Science Network (Yorkshire & Humber AHSN) and has proved a successful model to help spread and adopt innovations at pace and scale. Yorkshire & Humber AHSN also provides innovation support to three different ICSs in the region.

Fostering a culture of innovation

Explaining how the Hub and by extension Yorkshire & Humber AHSN are working to cultivate innovation in the region, its Chief Operating Officer and Deputy CEO, Kathy Scott says “it is as much about identifying good practice as it is implementing the ‘shiny stuff’.

“We can push out new ideas and innovations as much as we like, but if you don’t embed a culture of innovation and improvement, it’s not going to stick”

“As an AHSN we also have sight of a lot of potential solutions that can address those needs often identified by the innovation hub. So we are able to nudge the ICS leadership towards potential solutions.

“It’s about growing the capability and capacity for change within a locality and for improvement techniques and innovation adaptive solutions to be implemented. Not simply implementing new technology and essentially running away.

“We can push out new ideas and innovations as much as we like,” continues Kathy, “but if you don’t embed a culture of innovation and improvement, it’s not going to stick.”

The ICS’s digital focus has also enabled significant work on pre-emptive care. For example, through the Yorkshire & Humber AHSN’s digital accelerator programme Propel@YH, the AHSN has worked with innovator DigiBete to support the adoption of their ‘one stop shop’ app to help young people living with diabetes manage their treatment.

The app was clinically approved during the height of the pandemic with extra funding provided from NHS England and is now being used in 600 services across England. “This is an excellent example of how we can pre-emptively assess unmet need and streamline innovation into the system,” says Kathy.

Innovation as an antidote to health inequality

“Health inequalities is part of our design thinking from the get-go in any project,” says Aejaz, who points to the recent implementation of SkinVision, a tele dermatology app, as an example.

“The app was originally developed in the Netherlands, where predominantly you would have Caucasian skin that the AI would have been trained on,” he explains, “so, from the beginning, we have been mindful to capture more data on how well the app works on other skin types and feed that back to the company to improve their AI algorithms for wider populations.”

The Innovation Hub also works to ensure that implementing digital technology does not exacerbate inequality for less digitally mature users. “If somebody, for example, doesn’t have a smartphone that is able to run that app, there is always the non-digital pathway in parallel. So, it’s never either or.”

Risk appetite

“There is always a level of risk aversion when it comes to adopting something new in healthcare,” says Aejaz, “even with evidence backed solutions, we find there’s sometimes a level of reluctance. Staff want to know whether it’s going to work in their local context or not and whether introducing innovation would entail a significant ‘adoption’ curve. Overcoming hesitancy to innovation is, therefore, central to the role of organisations such as the AHSN and by extension ICS innovation hubs.

“We need to create systems which provide innovators with the necessary psychological safety that allows them to experiment”

“Building a culture of innovation is fundamentally about building a culture of increased risk appetite, where failure is most certainly an option. We need to create systems which provide innovators with the necessary psychological safety that allows them to experiment.”

To help shift the mindset of NHS staff in favour of innovation, the Innovation Hub established a series of ‘exemplar projects’, designed to erode the fear of failure and capture learnings in the process. For example, for Population Health Management exemplars, one of the priority themes for the ICS, the hub called for providers to submit ideas to the Hub, all framed under high priority population health challenges such as cardiovascular health. Successful applicants with promising ideas received funding in the region of £25,000 as well as co-ordination support from the Hub towards their project.

The programme has enabled frontline innovators and has led to the development of a host of new services incorporating novel technologies such as virtual wards and remote rehabilitation. The Hub is also working to transform dermatology pathways throughout the SYB region by introducing an app that allows patients to upload images of skin conditions and be processed more efficiently through the system. Funded by an NHSX Digital Partnerships award, this pilot project with Dermatology services in the Barnsley region will test out the use of this AI enabled app to ascertain how well it can successfully identify low risk skin lesions which can be addressed in primary care. Thereby reducing demand on secondary care and speeding up access for higher risk patients. Each of these projects demonstrates the capacity for transformation when on the ground staff are given the freedom to innovate.

“Introducing solutions outside of traditional domains will enable a culture of innovation and improvement”

Interestingly, many of the ideas that the Hub works with are non-tech solutions. For example, primary care providers working with local football teams via a 12 week health coaching programme to engage with fans who may be at risk of cardiovascular disease, or introducing Cognitive Behaviour Therapy techniques to patients with severe respiratory conditions to help reduce anxiety when experiencing an episode of breathlessness. To nurture a mentality more open to change, the Innovation Hub and AHSN teams have been reaching out to key leads from each of the provider organisations who are involved in innovation, improvement or research and invited them to become innovation ambassadors. “These ambassadors have become our eyes and ears on the ground across health providers, where they can start to introduce what we do and also help capture unmet needs from colleagues in their respective organisations.”

Following in the footsteps of the first innovation hub established by the Yorkshire & Humber AHSN in South Yorkshire, other AHSNs across the country are now looking at setting up innovation hubs within their ICS by bringing leadership together, getting them out of their ‘comfort zone’ and giving them the space to innovate, and hoping to chip away at risk aversion and fear of experimentation. Introducing solutions outside of traditional domains will enable a culture of innovation and improvement. To streamline past bureaucratic and individualistic hurdles, ICS frameworks are key to facilitating transformational change in every region of the country.

If you would like to find out more about the Yorkshire & Humber AHSN please contact info@yhahsn.com.

All news

Building sustainable ICS staffing to weather the workforce crisis

By Dr Anas Nader

The advent of integrated care systems (ICSs) across the NHS marks an invaluable opportunity to facilitate greater collaboration, efficiency and more joined-up care for patients.

To be successful, this period of transformation needs to be underpinned by a strong, comprehensive workforce strategy that enables staff to be flexibly and safely deployed in line with fluctuating demand.

Amid present staff shortages and rising waiting lists, and with pressures set to grow over winter, this is, unsurprisingly, no easy task for organisations. As managers rightly address these immediate challenges, it’s understandable that little time or capacity is left to support broader workforce transformation. Yet the benefits of a transition to more collaborative ICS-wide staffing have the power to tackle these same challenges in the long-term.

While it may seem like another hurdle for teams who are already facing extreme pressure, there are a number of ways that ICSs can reap these benefits, without compounding workloads or piling additional pressure on staff. Throughout my time working closely with NHS organisations to tackle various workforce challenges, I have found the following steps essential to successfully enabling truly collaborative staffing. I believe they are also the key to unlocking a more sustainable, long-term workforce strategy.

Harnessing the power of collaborative temporary staffing

Temporary staff are crucial to the successful running of an ICS, helping to plug any gaps in rotas across the region. However, currently, when organisations are unable to source clinicians from their own internal staff bank, they must often turn to more costly external agencies to fill vacant shifts. Instead, by building a collaborative network of approved temporary clinicians, organisations can seamlessly tap into a much larger and more flexible contingent workforce from which to reliably fill shifts.

The key to effectively leveraging a collaborative staff bank is enabling compliant digital passporting for all participating clinicians. This means approved workers can passport their credentials across different participating organisations, without having to repeat compliance or background checks. As a result, they can more easily work across a number of different sites and locations and be deployed effectively in line with demand throughout the ICS.

Increasing data oversight

In order to reliably plan ahead, identify staffing gaps and deploy staff where most needed, access to comprehensive data insights is crucial. This means not only enabling managers to view data from within their own organisation, but granting access to pan-regional workforce data from across the entire ICS.

Dynamic data reporting, which provides timely, granular insights into organisational performance, can help measure the success of workforce planning, enable targets to be reliably met and pinpoint areas where improvements can be made. Individual organisations should be able to assess their own performance data and compare this with others in their region. With clear visibility over regional shift fill rates, workforce spend and staffing trends, it becomes easier to identify areas for improvement, while harmonising pay rates and maintaining safe staffing levels in a truly collaborative manner.

Introducing more flexible rostering

When it comes to rostering, the current systems at managers’ disposal are often slow, outdated and require large amounts of manual input. Introducing more streamlined, digital systems which can safely provide staff with greater flexibility and predictability, while reducing the admin burden on managers, can help open the door to more effective ICS-wide rostering in the future.

Rostering clinicians based on skillset rather than title or grade will allow managers to deploy staff more effectively, in line with patient need. This will also give staff the flexibility to safely work in a wider range of roles, in different locations across the ICS, and to access wider professional development opportunities. These are all essential to helping boost retention.

Meanwhile, multi-organisational rostering could begin to allow more efficient deployment of staff to areas of highest need across the ICS. This makes it easier for managers to reliably plan ahead and gives staff greater control over where they work, in line with their personal and other professional commitments.

Prioritising system integration

System integration is a fundamental prerequisite to the success of every single one of these steps. If the systems being used to organise staffing within different organisations are unable to communicate or share data with each other, genuine collaboration will remain out of reach.

When introducing new workforce management systems, organisations should prioritise those which are fully integrated or interoperable, enabling managers to directly share workforce data, rota planning and temporary staffing networks with other organisations throughout the ICS. This reduces the need for manual data input, minimising admin for managers and speeding up the transfer of vital data and information.

As a result, organisations will be able to collaborate in real-time and deploy staff to the most appropriate services in line with evolving ICS-wide demand.

To reap the full rewards of ICS working, facilitating a collaborative, flexible workforce is vital. This transition does not have to be costly, nor add additional burden to managers or organisations. By working together and implementing these four key areas of change, we can lay the foundations for strong, collaborative ICS-wide working, built to weather the challenges which lie ahead.

Ethicon showcases product portfolio in UK & Ireland hospital tour

By Ethicon

Ethicon, the Surgical Technologies Company of Johnson & Johnson MedTech, has launched its first-ever roadshow across the UK & Ireland, including a showcase that demonstrates the role of digital innovation in supporting the NHS to tackle the backlog of patients waiting for treatment.

Ethicon is committed in its mission to support healthcare systems to treat more patients and provide better experiences and outcomes, especially as recent announcements from the Department for Health and Social Care show how important digital transformation of the healthcare system is, with £2 billion earmarked from the spending review to help digitise the NHS and social care sector.

The Ethicon roadshow began in September and runs until early December. It is a unique opportunity for clinical and non-clinical healthcare professionals to speak to representatives and industry experts about how driving digital transformation is pivotal in this mission, outlining the importance of Ethicon’s Surgical Simulation Strategy and Services & Solutions offering which gives surgeons additional information to support their clinical decision-making.

The products being showcased on the tour bus cover specialties including Colorectal, Gynaecology, Thoracic, and Bariatric. Ethicon’s digital offering has the potential to drive the next surgical revolution, bringing together the value of Next Generation Robotics and Instrumentation, Advanced Imaging, and AI-powered Digital Solutions.

Learn more about Ethicon and its product portfolio here.

“We’re focused on creating a differentiated digital ecosystem including working in partnership with our dedicated account management team to support a successful implementation, data insights, and best practice sharing,” said Jenny Nagy, Ethicon’s General Manager in Great Britain. She continued to highlight the value the company sees in this collaboration:

“Our Ethicon roadshow will give customers the opportunity to discuss innovation in healthcare and witness our innovations first-hand with our product demos hosted on the bus. Our mission may have been accelerated by the pandemic, but we’re keen to connect with our customers in-person to demonstrate the value we place on working together to advance the use of technology in tackling the biggest healthcare challenges.”

The Ethicon tour bus is also hosting:

Science of Energy Training
Surgical Simulation Suite
Product Training Innovation Workshops
New Product Innovations

Clinical and non-clinical healthcare professionals can register their interest in attending and booking a slot at their chosen hospital location here.

This is a sponsored article.

MIRACL announces new partnership with Birmingham Women’s and Children’s NHS Foundation Trust

By Integrated Care Journal

MIRACL – the world’s only single-step multi-factor authentication provider – announces their new partnership with Birmingham Women’s and Children’s NHS Foundation Trust.

With a new directive from NHS Digital to ensure multi-factor authentication (MFA) across IT services within the NHS, MIRACL was perfectly placed to deploy their single-step MFA system in these world- renowned hospitals.

Time is of the essence for all those working in the NHS, so finding a MFA solution that was efficient yet provided the additional layer of security that was now required and, at a cost that met the tight NHS budget, was a challenge. Medical records are highly sought by cyber criminals so any data held by the hospital is always incredibly vulnerable and must be well protected on every level.

MIRACL was able to integrate their single-step MFA codelessly, in just fifteen minutes – minimising disruption to services during the implementation phase, yet providing an added layer of IT security across the organisation. With thousands of users within the Trust accessing IT services on a daily basis, the transfer happened seamlessly and without any unwanted hiccups.

Furthermore, as a passwordless solution, staff weren’t tasked with having to remember yet another password or have to share biometric data. A simple four-digit PIN is all that is required – the patented tech does the rest.

David Marshall, Head of ICT at Birmingham Women’s and Children’s NHS Foundation Trust, added, “numerous staff throughout our sites are having to access NHS IT on a daily basis, but time is always of the essence and it is essential that not only is all data kept safe and private, but staff who need to access information can do so instantly and securely. It was no surprise when we were required to add multi-factor authentication to our systems but finding a solution that would fit our needs was a challenge. MIRACL has provided a single-step MFA that does not require a password and has integrated into our systems seamlessly.”

Rob Griffin, CEO at MIRACL commented, “when we were advised that NHS Digital were directing hospitals to install MFA, we knew our solution was perfect. MIRACL provides MFA, yet requiring just a single-step to use, means that staff can access the IT services as they were before and without the need to remember another password or have a second device at hand to authenticate by SMS. We all know that staff are often working at a high pace across the NHS, so sourcing a solution that did not waste precious time authenticating was really important.”

Since deployment of the service in mid-April, there have been a total of 150,000 authentications and only 283 failures or a failure rate of only 0.18%.

MIRACL is the world’s only single-step multi-factor authentication provider. It can easily be integrated into current company and NHS platforms and is a low cost verification option but with banking level security. It boasts clients such as Experian, Domino’s and Cashfac and has been licensed by big tech names such as Google and Microsoft.

For further press information, interviews or photography please contact the MIRACL press office: sarah.sawrey-cookson@miracl.com | 07765 110438

GHM Care messaging app integrates with digital care management platform Nourish Care

By Integrated Care Journal

Advancements in nurse call technology unearths a wealth of valuable data for care homes when surfaced alongside daily care records.

GHM Care has announced their flagship nurse call messaging and reporting tool Nexus will now integrate with Nourish Care’s digital care management platform. The ability to integrate personal care records with a nurse call system is a huge step towards a joined-up care environment.

Nexus is a messaging platform that delivers nurse call alerts directly to the smartphones of carers, improving staff efficiencies and response times.

The integration with Nourish will allow Nexus users to link nurse call activity against a resident’s personal care records, driving a greater resident experience through interoperability. Care teams will have complete transparency of the time of the day calls are being made, time of acceptance, reason for the call and the resolution times. This information surfaced alongside daily care records offers contextual oversight, further promoting better care decisions and outcomes. In addition, the integration will enable care teams to run detailed reports and populate care plans within Nourish.

Care homes will benefit from a more comprehensive picture of the personal care provided through more powerful data.

Neil McManus, Managing Director of GHM Care stated: “It’s been great working with Nourish on this project and now we can deliver exactly what our joint customers have asked for. The new functionality has been launched in response to the needs of care homes who previously would not have the time or capacity to record every nurse call alert in a resident’s personal care records. As a result, there is often a disconnect between care records and nurse call activity. The new integration overcomes this by automatically updating Nourish personal care records with any associated nurse call activity.”

Steve Lawrence, Head of Proposition and Partnerships from Nourish Care added: “We are thrilled to be partnering with GHM Care, their leading nurse call solution will open the door to new and exciting data insights when surfaced alongside daily care records housed in Nourish. I look forward to seeing the positive impact this delivers for care teams and those they support.”

Training & Development Lead, Luke Annetts, from Blackadder Corporation said: “I think the integration between Nexus and Nourish has worked well, the information transfers quickly from the Nexus cloud onto Nourish. I think that this information will be really helpful for reporting purposes, especially when we look at accidents/incidents and response times”.

Nourish Care is an app-based care management platform that allows care services to record at the point of care, streamline administrative processes and equip teams with the tools to provide more person-centred care and improve outcomes for the people they support. Nourish works with more than 2,500 care services in the UK and overseas within residential homes, nursing homes, learning disability services, mental health services, and other care settings. Nourish was one of the first recognised as a NHS Transformation Directorate Assured Supplier for the Digital Social Care Records (DSCR) DPS at launch and were also the first accredited by the PRSB as a Quality Partner, working to promote best practice standards for care.

To find out more about how Nourish can help your care service, visit their website www.nourishcare.co.uk to book your free demo today.

To find out more about Nexus by GHM Care, visit www.ghmcare.co.uk.

A person-centred, digital first approach to recovery

By Patricia Wynn

Ensuring that patient pathways are digitally enabled and person-centred is critical to tackling the elective backlog, writes Patricia Wynn, Director and Sales Leader, International Public Sector Health, Cerner Corporation

NHSE guidance states that “our ambition is to improve core digital and data services in hospitals to ensure we have the basics right.” A leading EPR provider in the UK and globally, Cerner supports systems to reach the minimum digital foundation and strive for HIMSS Stage 7 and beyond.

Cerner work across provider collaboratives to enable shared instances of the EPR. ICS-level collaboration reduces total cost of ownership and enables sharing of resources, such as PMO, training, back office and support. For example, a shared instance of Cerner accelerated provider collaboration across North West London ICS.

Imperial and ChelWest began sharing a domain in 2019 and now London North West and Hillingdon are set to join. According to Kevin Jarrold, ICS data and digital lead, “we have a growing agenda around collaboration across care pathways and the shared domain is absolutely fundamental.”

A shared domain has enabled NWL to gain efficiencies and generate much-needed capacity. Leaders can see across the system and transfer patients more effectively from one site to another. Virtual ward capacity is also managed centrally and embedded into the core EPR. Remote patient monitoring is leveraged from a variety of vendors, with all data feeding centrally into virtual wards created within the core EPR, enabling more efficient workflows and the sharing of virtual care staff.

Prioritising care

The national guidance outlines care must be prioritised based on clinical urgency, the impact of waiting on individuals and potential inequalities. To achieve this, North Central London (NCL) ICS uses Cerner HealtheIntent^®, a data and analytics platform that provides a single longitudinal record for every citizen, comprising data from all health and care organisations across the ICS.

According to Amy Bowen, director of system improvement, “[We built] an elective waiting list dashboard in HealtheIntent. Now we can show GPs for the first time ever what their waiting list looks like. We can cut that data by all the demographic factors, e.g. how many people have long-term conditions and how many? We can look and see by ethnicity, by deprivation – we can combine several factors. And we can actually understand that population at a practice level, at primary care network (PCN) level; by specialty, by borough.”

Transforming care

NHS guidance outlines transformation should focus on flexibility, ease of access and citizen control. Re-envisioning patient pathways – and ensuring they are digitally enabled and person-centred – will be critical. Royal Free London (RFL) has standardised and digitised 40 pathways.

Cerner experts are involved from the beginning of pathway design. Dr John Connolly, CEO of the Royal Free Hospital and group director of clinical pathways shares, “The goal of this ambitious programme is to ensure every patient can get the same high-quality treatment in any of the Trust’s three hospitals… and to create value for the entire healthcare system in the locality – not just our hospitals, but also primary care and public health services in an area that has high levels of deprivation.”

Supporting patients

Ultimately, a person-centred, digital first approach must include the person at the centre. Cerner Patient Portal UK, delivered in collaboration with Induction Healthcare, enables interaction and engagement between caregivers and their populations. A prostate cancer survivor in the Wirral explained, “I cannot emphasise how much the patient portal has improved the quality of my life. Those two weeks of waiting – the stress of revisiting the room where I was given my diagnosis – all that is gone now.”

NHSE’s operating priorities will not be achieved by overworking caregivers and staff, but by enabling them to work smarter and more collaboratively. Contact Cerner Corporation if you share a belief in the power of technology-enabled transformation and want to discuss how Cerner can support your system as in tackling the unprecedented backlog of demand.