It’s time to meet the winners of the Forward Healthcare Awards 2022!
The awards provide an opportunity to shine a spotlight on the great work happening across the health and care sector and here at Integrated Hlth we are so pleased to share the worthy winners of each category.
Category: Improvement and Change Project of the Year
Who won? Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (CUH)
What did they do? When non-urgent outpatient activity was restored following suspension of services due to COVID-19, the Children’s Services team at CUH found the lack of a collated timetable for planned activity to be a significant challenge. They introduced a live online room rota for Clinic 6 which aimed to monitor and improve clinic room utilisation, allow for efficient recycling of unused rooms, track key performance indicators and aid in COVID recovery plans. As the rota can be accessed easily by operational and clinical staff via Google Sheets, it also enables all updates to be seen instantaneously.
Why did they win? Following the live online room rota, room utilisation has risen to consistently over 90 percent. CUH state that the project has “future proofed the service in case of future pauses in outpatient activity” and feedback from admin and clinical teams praises the project for making jobs easier, efficiency and reducing staff stress. The team have also been able to introduce new KPIs, identify space to hold extra clinics to help with the COVID backlog, and plans are being put in place to use the rota system for other services.
Category: Community or Primary Care Innovation
Who won? Lantum
What did they do? Lantum’s total workforce management platform Connected Scheduling aims to support the NHS in tackling staff shortages and scheduling challenges, ultimately saving the NHS money. Connecting Scheduling supports organisations to efficiently schedule staff with a rostering solution, staff bank feature and network of more than 30,000 locum clinicians in one place, reducing administration as the staff bank can manage permanent and locum staff across multiple clinics. Lantum organises Clinical Governance checks, handles pension paperwork, provides a free DBS check for all GPs, automates admin and facilitates next-day payments.
Why did they win? Connecting Scheduling provides organisations with full visibility and control over their resources and staffing. During the COVID pandemic, Lantum offered their rostering tool for free to all vaccination clinics in the UK to support in the set-up of over 150 COVID vaccination clinics. To date, Lantum has supported the delivery of over 16 million doses of the vaccine by mobilising nearly 9,000 staff across 36 different roles at different clinics, with approximate savings of £250,000. In general, Connecting Schedule is said to have saved the NHS over £30 million with Lantum filling over 20,000 sessions across the UK each month.
Category: Solution for Healthcare Professionals
Who won? Doctify
What did they do? Doctify is a healthcare review platform aiming to make it easier for healthcare professionals to collect, analyse and publish patient feedback online. Co-founded by two surgeons with more than two decades of combined experience working within the NHS, Doctify allows healthcare professionals to consistently collect, analyse and transparently publish greater volumes of meaningful, up-to-date patient feedback, aiming to provide representative and reliable understanding of patient experience. Doctify review links can be integrated into PMS systems so that patients automatically receive feedback links. Members are also provided with a dashboard where machine learning is used to transform reviews into bitesize insights which can be segmented by condition, procedure, sentiment, department and location.
Why did they win? Doctify enables everybody within the organisation to get real-time insights and data on the care being provided in order to identify any potential gaps in services, and drive the right improvements to enhance it. A client example from HCA shows that since opening in the UK in 1995, they collected 890 reviews on Google with an average 3.5 star rating. Since using Doctify, they have collected 14,111 reviews with an average 4.7 rating. The team are also currently developing a global benchmarking tool that will use Doctify’s years of experience in digitising and analysing the patient voice to allow providers to measure themselves against peers, colleagues and competitors on a global scale.
Category: Excellence in Supporting Patients and Healthcare Teams
Who won? Careology
What did they do? Careology developed a solution with Nuffield Health’s cancer care team to enable patients to have access to a fully digital care support solution with the aim of helping them to feel connected, empowered and in control of their health. Through the platform, patients can track symptoms such as temperature, pain and nausea within the app or by connecting to a wearable device, and nurses can identify symptoms quickly. Careology’s real-time insights means that care teams can effectively prioritise patients in need and the virtual ward view helps to provide a more personalised, connected patient experience. Careology started the pilot with Nuffield Health in February 2022 to demonstrate how cancer care could be improved through connected remote monitoring and engagement technology, with full rollout across Nuffield Health expected by December.
Why did they win? Careology proactively designed the digital solution so that nurses and patients could gain the most amount of benefit from the technology and it is now being used by the Lead Nurse 97 percent of the time. Feedback from nurses and patients has been collected throughout the pilot and fed into the agile development process with incremental changes made; for example, patients said that they were forgetting to make updates so push notifications were created and app engagement increased by 12 percent. Staff at Nuffield Health called the solution “hugely beneficial” and patient feedback termed it “brilliant”.
Category: NHS and Supplier Partnership of the Year
Who won? ORCHA
What did they do? ORCHA developed the ORCHA Digital Health Academy to deliver free digital training to every worker. With the need to support a digitally-ready workforce highlighted in the NHSX Readiness Plan but a scarcity on training for crucial frontline staff, ORCHA created the Academy with the support of universities and healthcare professionals. ORCHA stepped out of its day-to-day role as a health app review engine and supplier of commercial digital health libraries to deliver entirely free training resources for every NHS employee, with modules written by ORCHA’s NHS Clinical Leads group. The CPD-accredited online platform is available at orcha-academy.com and on the Health Education England NHS Learning Hub.
Why did they win? ORCHA describe the move to provide free digital training for NHS staff as “socially responsible”, and the Academy has had a positive response with 10.5 million page impressions on the website and 1000 delegates. They share that it has become a core tool used by many NHS organisations and is one of the most-accessed catalogues on the Health Education England Learning Hub, alongside being embedded into learning platforms across multiple trusts, an ICS and another health hub.
Category: Innovation Supporting NHS Trusts
Who won? Compass Wellbeing CIC
What did they do? Compass Wellbeing aims to bridge the gap between voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations (VCSEs) and healthcare services by providing a more straightforward approach to working with their NHS parent organisation, East London Foundation Trust (ELFT). With the region containing some of the most culturally diverse and fastest growing populations in England, with high levels of deprivation, unemployment and poor living conditions, Compass Wellbeing and ELFT’s joint ambition has been to better connect with local communities. Compass Wellbeing set out to develop partnerships with ELFT and VCSEs across the trust’s footprint to support the redesign of community mental health teams and developed a simple process for procurement, developed a database of VCSEs to circulate information about opportunities and events, and engaged with VCSEs directly and through partnership working to develop relationships.
Why did they win? Through this work, Compass Wellbeing has witnessed the value that investments can bring to reach previously excluded communities. They say that their “greatest success” has been in supporting organisations to continue critical work during the pandemic. Increasing partnership working has led to larger VCSE organisations to work with smaller ones to deliver more effective outcomes for service users. Ultimately, their work has built capacity, improved resilience and created sustainable development opportunities.
Category: Early-Stage Pilot or Early Adopter of the Year
Who won? Northern Care Alliance
What did they do? Northern Care Alliance developed ANCHOR: an artificial neural network for chronic subdural hematoma referral outcome prediction. Noting that chronic subdural hematoma (CSDH) is a very common neurosurgical condition with an increasing rate of referrals, Nothern Care Alliance aimed to create evidence-based machine learning algorithms capable of safely predicting CSDH referral outcomes, with open access for referring physicians and the accepting neurosurgical team. They examined the referral database and analysed all CSDH referrals from 2015-2020 and six machine models were trained and compared and the ANN model was found to demonstrate superior clinical net benefit.
Why did they win? The AI tool aims to efficiently triage referrals in a safe and reliable manner; it is hoped that using this model clinically will result in faster transmission os information across all parties involved, less anxiety for patients and families, and better allocation of resources. The technology will also provide patients with more information about the future of their disease course, allowing them to understand what is happening and why decisions are made, and it can be used to support junior physicians in training.
Category: Efficiency Savings of the Year
Who won? NHS Shared Business
What did they do? NHS Shared Business Services (NHS SBS) partnered with Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust in order to introduce Robotic Process Automation (RPA) with the aims of creating a more efficient pharmacy invoice process. Across 12 weeks, the team designed and developed a comprehensive RPA solution nicknamed Steve following documentation, testing and approvals. Steve was programmed to handle the consolidation of pharmacy invoices into a single weekly payment, which achieved reduced invoice costs.
Why did they win? Steve the bot has reduced the previous manual task competition time from one hour to just two minutes. Previously, the work was exposed to potential input errors in addition to slowing down due to employee annual leave and sick leave. Steve can undertake the same work in two minutes with a 100 percent accuracy rate. The trust expects annual financial savings of around £40,000 in this area of the hospital alone.
Category: Best Use of New and Emerging Technologies
Who won? PHL Youla
What did they do? PHL developed Youla, an innovative and personalised home monitoring system enabling individuals to continue to live independently in their own homes. Youla places sensors around the home which monitor movement and activity throughout the day, combined with medical observations. Supported by a clinically-led, 24/7 contact centre, service users have constant access to clinical support pathways. The monitoring service is proactive and learns the behaviours of individuals, tailoring the care package to ensure the correct level of support, and an online dashboard allows family members to monitor behaviours and update information following visits to the monitored patient to ensure the service is up-to-date and accurate.
Why did they win? PHL share that “significant savings” have been recognised over a two-year period. A recent suvey completed on participants found that 92 percent described the service as good or excellent and the same percentage were likely or extremely likely to recommend the service. In an example of Youla making a difference, an individual was frequently in and out of hospital before signing up to Youla; since being on the programme with daily observations taken and calls made, he has not returned to hospital, and the individual has commented that he feels that the service cares.
Category: Improving Outcomes
Who won? Closed Loop Medicine
What did they do? Closed Loop Medicine is a TechBio company developing combination prescription drug-plus software products to redefine precision medicine, provide bespoke universal healthcare access and improve patient outcomes. Their platform facilitates personalised drug-dose optimisation through integration of drugs and devices with patient-led digital experiences and closed loop models of care. Their work includes development of a chronic insomnia solution and a product to manage hypertension using a patient-centric approach, alongside expansion of the platform capabilities to support precision medicine across broad therapeutic areas.
Why did they win? CLM’s vision is that one size does not fit all when it comes to drugs. This belief is backed up by findings on their work; with regards to the chronic insomnia solution, CLM are on track to submit “a novel first-in-class combination product”, whilst preliminary results on their hypertension management product validates the capabilities of combination technology and shows patient support for the customised approach.
And that brings us to the end!
A huge well done to all our winners, and to everyone who entered.
