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The HETT Unexpected Innovation Awards returns in November 2022 to celebrate the very best in experimental design, collaboration, and leadership in digital healthcare.
The event showcases champions of digital health innovation and highlights some great stories of transformation. The awards bring together the health and care ecosystem and highlight best practice examples to inspire more to do the same.
The Integrated Care Collaboration Award recognises the collaborative projects, directives, and initiatives that demonstrate the power of integrated care. Nominees illustrate their strategy’s capacity to deliver integrated care that problem solves by engaging partners throughout the system.
The three shortlisted submissions for this category are:
Digital Health and Care Wales – National Digital Design for Looked After Children Services
Wales has the highest number of looked after children in the United Kingdom. Through the implementation of the Welsh Community Care Information System (WCCIS), an opportunity arose to design a national digital process to underpin Looked After Children (LAC) services that would ensure greater efficiency in data entry and sharing of information.
A task group was set up to agree the business process, data specifications, reporting requirements, and methodologies. The group consisted of practitioners, heads of services, information analysts, Welsh government representatives and other national bodies.
A six-step implementation included practitioner workshops, regional reviews, and sign off through the Welsh Information Standards Board. Building, testing, piloting, and evaluating in WCCIS was a key step.
A data-centric approach was taken. Targets included reducing the data entry burden on practitioners to release their time to provide more care, entering data only once, and making it available in digital format. This supported effective decision-making and ensured a child did not have to repeat their history at each intervention. Access to robust and timely data also enabled heads of services to predict the demand on health and social care services.
The collaboration has enabled health and social care to become more evidence-driven, using research, knowledge, and information to improve outcomes for citizens in Wales. Working in this way is now seen as the blueprint to progress national digital design for all community services in Wales.
NHS England, AHSN Network and Health Innovation Manchester - National Innovation Collaborative for Digital Health
The National Innovation Collaborative for Digital Health is a learning and support system uniting thousands of health and social care professionals working with technologies that enable care to be delivered to people at home.
National and local resources being developed include online forums, benefits management support, rapid evaluations, case studies, and videos and podcasts involving teams from different professions, sectors, and regions. These collaborations and partnerships are transcending geographical and traditional sector boundaries.
NHS and social care teams from local, regional, and national organisations, including local authorities, ICSs, trusts, AHSNs and charities, are coming together as part of a fast-growing movement that is:
- Enabling professionals to rapidly connect to share successes and learning
- Contributing to evidence on the impact of technology-enabled care
- Increasing collaboration towards equitable, integrated and personalised care for all
- Helping protect and improve the health and wellbeing of people across the country
Since its launch in November 2020, the collaborative and its 1650 members have been involved in more than 100 projects across England to support 360,000 people at home with technology-enabled remote monitoring.
Early results include:
- At least 4,250 bed days saved and a 21 per cent average reduction in A&E attendances reported by 11 projects in the East of England, London, Midlands and South East England
- An 18 per cent average reduction in the hospital length of staff for care home residents aged 65 and over in a Mid and South Essex project
- An estimated 765 hours of clinical time saved by just one project in the North East and Yorkshire region
Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and ICS – Patient Flow Dashboard
The process of discharge from acute hospitals often involves communication between multiple stakeholders across several services within the wider ICS, including community, Home First services, and adult social care.
Previously, there had been an inability for operational staff to view patient level data as a collective through a single point of access, which resulted in inefficient use of clinical resources. This led to discharge delays, poor understanding of discharge pathways, and difficulties monitoring and tracking patients across more than one provider.
Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (GHFT) worked in partnership with Gloucestershire Integrated Care System (ICS) to develop a secure, online, patient flow dashboard to facilitate better care, enable faster coordination of patient discharges, and improve health outcomes. Business intelligence teams worked closely with partners to create the dashboard that provides an at-a-glance oversight of all patients on a discharge pathway. The dashboard is now being used by more than 40 stakeholders across the ICS.
The platform gives staff access to real-time data, enabling them to manage the treatment pathway more efficiently and discharge to the most appropriate destination. In one case, a nursing home patient was able to avoid A&E and admission to an inpatient ward, demonstrating the dashboard is helping with other pain-points, such as A&E wait times.
Prior to its inception, the disjointed approach to patient discharge pathways in Gloucestershire could lead to patients “falling down the cracks” between organisations, thus increasing the risk of delays in care. Now, all databases are linked and shared, reducing this risk significantly. Organisations can view all patients on discharge pathways across the system, ensuring patients do not experience unnecessary delays.
Visit the HETT Unexpected Innovation Awards 2022 website for more information about the categories and the upcoming awards ceremony.
The HETT Unexpected Innovation Awards will take place on 23 November 2022 to celebrate the very best in experimental design, collaboration, and leadership in digital healthcare.
