News

Two NHS Western Isles projects have been shortlisted for Holyrood Digital Health and Care Awards.

ATTEND ANYWHERE

The first project was shortlisted in the category ‘Patient Centred Care’ and is for the work the NHS Western Isles Technology Enabled Care (TEC) team has been doing with Respiratory Consultant, David Ross. The nomination was for developing an innovative patient-centred respiratory service using the ‘Attend Anywhere’ Video Conferencing platform and remote diagnostics.

The ‘tele-respiratory’ service uses ‘Attend Anywhere’, a high quality, low bandwidth platform that does not require any special software, only Google Chrome and a webcam. It can be accessed from a laptop, tablet or mobile phone. This means it is very flexible and can be used literally anywhere. Using Attend Anywhere, Dr Ross can now see patients in Stornoway, Benbecula and Barra (remotely) in the same day. There are significant travel time and cost savings which can be reinvested back into patient care. Waiting lists are consequently much shorter and urgent patients can be seen immediately, without the need to wait for the consultant’s next visit to the Western Isles.

Because the quality of Attend Anywhere, introduced in the Western Isles in April 2017, is so good, patients engage very well and the presence of a nurse in the consultation helps them feel supported. A waiting area facility offers them the security of knowing they are in the right place at the right time, and that the clinician knows they are waiting.

Patients have told NHS Western Isles that they feel the health service has really listened to them and taken on board their worries and anxieties about waiting for appointments and the need to travel, especially if they are experiencing breathing difficulties. The success of the respiratory clinics has been a driver for transforming other services, using Attend Anywhere (multiple sclerosis, rheumatology and smoking cessation to name a few), which has hugely improved the patient experience overall.

MORSE

The second category the team has been shortlisted in is ‘The Mobile Health Award’ category. This is for the development and implementation of ‘Morse’. Morse is an app which runs on Android and iOS devices. It enables healthcare professionals to take and work with patient data offline. Changes are saved to a local database on the device. Then, when an internet signal is next available, the user can sync the data with the patient systems. This system is allowing our community teams to become fully digital: improving communication, giving them access to the latest patient information quickly, and working offline with digital forms and electronic referrals, etc.

Our eHealth team and clinicians have been working in collaboration with Cambric Systems to introduce this mobile application that will give both the most recent and historical patient information to the healthcare professional when out and about, without an internet connection. This improves patient safety where it is most needed: at the point of care.

The awards ceremony is on February 20 and the winners will be announced on the night.

NHS Western Isles Chief Executive Gordon Jamieson said: “As remote and rural islands, we have a responsibility to our patients in the Western Isles to ensure that services are available to them as efficiently and as safely as possible, despite the obvious additional challenges we face in terms of our geography. Both of these excellent systems are improving patient care in different ways, and both demonstrate the Board’s commitment to becoming a world leader in the application of telehealth, to improve how we care for patients.

“What is so encouraging about these systems is, not just the clear benefits we recognise as health professionals, in terms of patient safety and efficiency of time, but also that feedback from patients has been so positive. It’s not always easy and comfortable to embrace change, and in particular new technology, but we are delighted that feedback from both patients and staff has been excellent. These systems are clearly user friendly and improve access to both data and services. I would like to congratulate the staff involved in introducing, developing and progressing these systems and wish our local team all the very best at the awards ceremony.”