Birmingham Community Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust awarded for its use of innovation in the fight against COVID-19
Birmingham Community Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust (BCHC) has received an award for the innovative and timely use of digital transformation technology in response to the pandemic.
BCHC has been awarded Digital Transformation Project of the Year in recognition of its rapid development of solutions that centralise information and coordinate the Trust’s 4,500 members of staff delivering well over 100 clinical services across the West Midlands.
The BCHC team developed the Covid-19 Contingency Planning Hub, which has enabled the Trust to rapidly scale-up and re-strategize its service delivery throughout various phases of the pandemic in order to continue providing the very best care for patients in the region.
During the outbreak the hub has covered factors such as the redeployment of staff to cope with the pandemic, details of employees who are infected, reports on buildings affected by the outbreak, personal risk assessments and reports on stocks of personal protective equipment.
The Hub is taking in recovery assessments, details of safe environments, staff swabbing and the increasing number of requests for data for research purposes. Expansion of the hub is underway so that it can manage the Fast Responders programme and absence management.
Throughout all phases of the pandemic, the hub has eased the daily reporting process to NHS England and Public Health England, which would have been challenging without centralised information. A history of all data is retained making it possible to plot business intelligence reports with summaries from service to trust level, and role-based permissions assigned for the sharing and editing of content.
The programme of work is being led by Steve Pollard, Head of Information and Business Intelligence at BCHC. A scalable, virtual infrastructure, code light development tools and a multi-disciplined team have made it possible to create solutions quickly, including the rapid development of a Trust-wide system of more than 15 newly-created eForms and dashboards, using a combination of NDL’s eForm programme and existing dashboard solutions.
Liberating information for better decision making and quicker action has resulted in a time saving that equates to approximately £200,000 of public money and thousands of hours across the organisation. The hub dashboard has been the most used system by managers across the organisation. There have been over 70,000 independent data form submissions 15,000 web form submissions, 300,000 items of data, 150,000 hub views, and 20,000 automated emails since early March.
Integral to the team’s emergency response was the utilisation of the Digital Process Transformation platform from NDL, a UK tech company that is driving forward innovation for the public good. Its solutions are built with a community of public sector organisations to ensure its technology empowers people to work smarter and be more productive. It provides the tools that enable NHS Trusts to create ground-breaking solutions, such as the COVID-19 Contingency Planning Hub.
Steve Pollard said: “We are delighted to have received the NDL Digital Transformation Project of the Year award. Having the right information at hand has been crucial in meeting the challenges presented by the pandemic, and the Hub has been an incredibly powerful resource for us, enabling the Trust to act quickly and confidently in order to provide the best care possible for patients. Feedback from users has been positive, and it has vastly reduced the need to chase information from within the organisation, reducing stress in a high pressure environment and freeing up team members to use their time more effectively.”
Tom Wright, Head of Digital Engagement at NDL said: “We would like to extend our congratulations to Steve and the team at BCHC for their award, which recognises the very best use of digital transformation technology with social purpose. We work with NHS Trusts across the country and hope that the Covid-19 Contingency Planning Hub provides a helpful example to show how similar challenges being faced elsewhere can be overcome more easily.”
Public sector organisations and NHS Trusts across the country have participated in the NDL Community Awards, which showcase a diverse range of innovative projects that demonstrate the best use of automation and digital solutions to overcome some of the biggest challenges being faced by public services today. At a time when the NHS and public sector is under enormous pressure, the awards shine a spotlight on excellence and the teams and organisations that are going above and beyond to improve the lives of citizens as well as of those that are delivering our much-needed services.
NDL is a UK SME software company that works with the public sector for the public good. For more information about NDL customer projects and outcomes, visit www.ndl.co.uk/NEWS-EVENTS/Case-Studies to access a library of public sector case studies or contact [email protected].
