TECHNOLOGY
Improving healthcare technology management
David Cook and Dr John Sandham provide an insight into improving healthcare technology management to deliver transformation. They argue that the application of technology can be used to facilitate new ways of working and enhance patient safety.
It is internationally accepted that technology can be an accelerant for delivering transformative change. This can only happen if the investment in technology is planned, the staff using the technology have appropriate support and training, and the technology strategy actually delivers more productive healthcare at a lower cost. The Nuffield Trust recently stated that technology can transform the delivery of healthcare if organisations not only understand the opportunity to transform services, but are also able to ‘grasp’ those opportunities and actually deliver the changes: “Clinically led improvement, enabled by new technology, is transforming the delivery of healthcare and our management of population health. Yet strategic decisions about clinical transformation and the associated investment in information and digital technology can all too often be a footnote to NHS board discussions. This needs to change.1
“This report sets out the
possibilities to transform healthcare offered by digital technologies, offering an insight into how to grasp the possibilities and benefits.
NHS Budget reduced by £1.1bn for capital investment
In a recent news story, the shadow health secretary said that “Five years of Tory neglect has left many hospitals with ageing equipment and a growing bill for urgent maintenance.” The capital budget of the NHS is used to fund repairs and replace out-of-date or broken equipment. The NHS was expected to be allocated £4.8bn to cover this area, but the Budget revealed the health service will only be receiving £3.7bn of capital budget.2 There are many innovators across healthcare organisations that can see the potential of technology to deliver change, but are still unable to deliver for reasons of lack of capital and, often, lack of people in leadership positions with the knowledge, skills and authority to champion the case for new technology and deliver the changes required. The technology already exists to transform healthcare. What we really need are the right
people able to deliver, and entrepreneurial partners willing to invest their knowledge and finances to resource delivery of the transformation as part of a business collaboration. Healthcare technology businesses are willing to work with public and private hospitals to introduce healthcare technology (new medical devices and software) that can improve patient care, staff productivity, and cost per patient. One area in which technology solutions should deliver efficiency is in the technological integration from the home to the ward for step up, and from the ward to the home for step down, care models. This is only possible if the healthcare organisation recognises the need to call upon technology experts when it comes to connecting different technologies. There is a lot of evidence about how information technology can transform healthcare, but unfortunately there are also many cases where IT has failed to deliver the expected benefits. Real transformation only happens if the top management in health Trusts and health boards understand the significance of involving technology
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experts in the decision making. Technology is developing at such a pace that non-experts may be unaware of not only technological requirements, but opportunities that can arise from harnessing the latest technological developments. This map of stakeholder relationships within the healthcare organisation is changing and the leadership required to utilise technology requires a multi-disciplinary team that includes clinical engineers and IT system engineers, in addition to the more established stakeholders from procurement, finance, and clinical backgrounds.
A paperless NHS?
Recent reports require NHS organisations to become paperless by 2020, with “key digital information systems in place, fully integrated and utilised by October 2018”. Systems such as EPMA (Electronic Prescribing Medicines Administration) and Radio- Frequency ID tracking are just some of the systems cited in these reports.3,4 Healthcare organisations have hundreds of different types of medical technology
OCTOBER 2016
Technology
Strategy
Transformation
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