IEG4 software innovation for the Continuing Healthcare (CHC) Assessment Process is selected to join the nationally-celebrated NHS Innovation Accelerator (NIA) in 2019.
IEG4’s CHC assessment process automation tool, CHC2DST, underpins the digitisation of the CHC process and delivers improvements to service quality, patient safety and productivity by eliminating paper assessments and automating the workflow and communication to speed up decisions around eligibility.
“We are delighted to join the NHS Innovation Accelerator,” said Charles MacKinnon, Healthcare Director at IEG4. “As patient referrals look set to increase in CHC with a growing and increasingly elderly population, the need for effectively managing the process is clear.
NHS England stated to the Public Accounts Committee the aim of saving £855 million from the projected growth in CHC spend by 2021, which, it says, CCGs could help achieve by adopting best practice, speeding up assessment work, reducing administrative costs and using better case management.”
The new digital CHC assessment process allows recommendations to be verified by reviewers faster and will automatically generate an audit trail with supporting evidence under each case to help apply policy consistently and effectively according to the National Framework.
The solution had been co-developed with five local CCGs in Cheshire and Wirral whose performance against the key NHS England metrics has also been transformed. The Cheshire and Wirral CCGs now form part of the NHS England Strategic Improvement Programme team for CHC, helping to establish and communicate an improved vision and service standard for CHC to their NHS England colleagues.
MacKinnon concludes: “Cheshire and Wirral CCGs has shown that the NHS can adopt innovation rapidly with the right mind-set and leadership. Many other progressive CCGs are now following suit and have access to a readily-deployable blueprint for digital transformation.”
Now entering its fourth year, the NIA is an NHS England initiative delivered in partnership with England’s 15 Academic Health Science Networks (AHSNs). Since it launched in July 2015, the NIA has supported the uptake and spread of 37 high-impact, evidence-based innovations across more than 1,700 NHS sites.
Each of the new innovations joining the NIA this year offer solutions supporting priority areas for England’s NHS: Mental Health, Primary Care and early diagnosis and prevention of cancer. Their recruitment onto the NIA follows an international call and robust selection process, including review by over 100 clinical, patient and commercial assessors, and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE).
Professor Stephen Powis, NHS Medical Director, said: “The NHS Long Term Plan puts the latest technology and innovation at the heart of people’s care and the future of our health service. Right across the NHS patients are benefitting from world-beating innovations, spread as part of this programme.”
Dr Séamus O’Neill, Chair of the AHSN Network, said: “The NHS Innovation Accelerator is one of the flagship programmes of the AHSN Network. We are very proud of the impact it is having in supporting innovators across the NHS and social care. Many very promising NIA innovations have benefited from visibility and evidence generation through the AHSNs. It is gratifying too that we are already seeing a number of the NIA innovations getting traction in terms of adoption and spread with patient and population benefit as a consequence. We look forward to working with the new NIA Fellows over the coming months to develop and deploy these life-saving innovations at scale across the country.”
The 13 innovations selected to join the NIA in 2019 are:
Primary Care
Mental Health
Prevention and early diagnosis of cancer
For more information about the NIA, visit www.nhsaccelerator.com
