Latest digital health blog: UHS, the global centre of digital excellence

I have tried a couple of times over the last week or so to get this blog written, but owing to a number of distractions (yes you know who you are) I have found time on a gloriously sunny afternoon, as I look forward to my Easter chocolate, to complete this with no interruptions.

As many of you will know, following the publication of the Wachter Report, University Hospitals Southampton Foundation Trust (UHS) was successful in their bid to become a Global Centre of Digital Excellence (GDE); chosen to deliver innovative and pioneering approaches to their digital services.

I was delighted therefore when given the opportunity to gate-crash an event they held a few Fridays ago called Future of IT for nursing, clinical teams and UHS.

My initial observation had absolutely nothing to do with technology, rather the numbers of staff who had taken time out of their Friday afternoon to attend.  In discussion with Adrian Byrne, the Chief Information Officer at UHS, he explained they’d even had to change rooms to accommodate the numbers of staff who wished to come along.

In terms of the stimulating content of the event, there is just too much to capture in one blog, but initially we heard about a number of the work streams linked to the Trust’s GDE programme. These included:

• Implementation of their e-prescribing replacement
  
  
• The use of patient wristbands when drugs are administered; referred to as positive ID or closed loop prescribing
  
  
• The exploration of cabinet technology, currently being used on the Isle of Wight. Capturing the contents of medicine cabinets – recording what is in them, recording when drugs are removed, not only improving safety but also enabling a better system of stock control
  
  
• A focus on clinical decision support, including alerts, to ensure that tasks related to specific clinical interventions are followed through correctly
  
  
• Device integration (perhaps one of the biggest issues we face going forward). The Trust has identified nearly 800 devices across the organisation, which they hope to link-up, no mean feat!
  
  
• The Whiteboard touch screen tool and an observation system capturing patient’s vital signs on a mobile device both being rolled-out across the trust
  

There was certainly a lot of ground to cover and participants including myself were enthused by the continuing progress of the work.

Without a doubt from my own experience and others, the key to success when delivering technological change is creating a culture within an organisation (from top to bottom) which embraces  transformation and it certainly looked, from where I was sitting, that UHS is heading in the right direction.

By programme lead, Katie Cheeseman