INFORMATION SOURCES
AI platform to streamline access to guidance
Research indicates NHS EFM staff spend an average of 11 hours each week navigating disparate information sources for answers to common challenges. Addressing this inefficiency, a team from the University of Cambridge, supported by IHEEM, has developed an AI-driven platform ‘to provide instant, evidence-based answers to technical queries’. Carl-Magnus von Behr, Director of
innex.ai, unveiled the system at the recent IHEEM Wales Regional Conference at the ICC Wales. Here he, CTO and co-founder of
innex.ai, Dr Jan Blümel, and final-year medical student and researcher at the University of Southampton, Alan Saji, report.
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The
innex.ai platform integrates a comprehensive database with a user- friendly chatbot interface, effectively reducing search times by 35%, and enhancing the quality of responses by 53%. This breakthrough promises not only to streamline access to information, but also to enhance collaboration and decision-making across the NHS. Following a successful pilot at Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, where the platform demonstrated significant benefits in operational efficiency and compliance with regulatory standards, the platform is now set to expand to more pioneering NHS Trusts. This expansion will equip more teams with the essential tools to overhaul their information management practices, ensure rigorous compliance, and foster a more collaborative environment within the built environment of the NHS.
Daunting infrastructure and workforce challenges High-quality facilities are crucial for providing safe healthcare services, ensuring patient care, and safeguarding staff health and wellbeing. Sadly, a substantial portion of healthcare infrastructure across the UK is severely outdated, and grapples with a substantial maintenance backlog of £11.6 bn (up 13.6% year-on-year) due to chronic underinvestment.1,2 Additionally, workforce challenges
exacerbate these problems, with roughly 34% of the estates and facilities management (EFM) workforce aged 55 or above, and a higher sickness absence rate among EFM staff, at 7.5%, compared with 4.9% across the broader NHS workforce.3
The NHS Staff Survey 2023
highlights the many challenges faced by EFM staff, many of whom reported lower levels of satisfaction, especially in the areas of feeling rewarded and included in workplace matters. Notably, there were significant gaps in the scores for ‘We are always learning’, and ‘We are a team’ compared with national averages. This
38 Health Estate Journal September 2024
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Figure 1: Results of a study investigating time spent searching for information across 64 NHS EFM staff.5
dissatisfaction is mirrored in the higher leaver rate of 7.6% among EFM staff, which is higher than the overall rate of 7.2%.4 Navigating regulatory and best practice
information presents additional difficulties to NHS EFM staff. To ensure statutory compliance and operational efficiency, NHS EFM staff are required to search through various repositories. These include national information sources, such as HTMs, HBNs, PAM, the Model Hospital, and the Collaboration Hub. Staff also need to consult industry information sources (e.g. on funding support, professional body guidance, practitioner journals, and industry trends), and Trust-specific information such as Trust policies, strategies, site information, equipment manuals, and intranet resources. However, these repositories are difficult to navigate, as described by a Director of EFM, who likened the process to ‘searching for a needle in a haystack’, while an Authorising Engineer added that ‘guidance is frequently outdated and overlaps’. A study at the University of Cambridge
investigated the inefficient search for regulatory and best practice documents, with 64 participants from various NHS Band levels and external consultants
such as AEs. The findings from this study (see Figure 1) show that on average, NHS EFM staff – ranging from tradespersons to Directors of Estates and Facilities, spend an average of 11 hours per week on searching for information from fragmented repositories. Notably, staff in Band Levels 8a-d spend the most time, averaging about 12.3 hours weekly. The breakdown of this time shows that staff dedicate about 3.6 hours to national guidance and 3.8 hours to Trust-specific documents each week, indicating a significant effort in maintaining compliance and staying updated within their respective Trusts. Keeping abreast of industry trends and developments also demands a notable investment of time, with an average of 2.6 hours weekly across all staff, and up to 3.8 hours for those in Band Levels 8a-d.
AI solution to streamline search for information Faced with these daunting challenges, technology offers promising solutions. To reduce the time wasted on frustrating information search, Carl-Magnus von Behr, having studied knowledge sharing among NHS EFM teams, and Dr. Jan Blümel,
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Hours spent on information retrieval per week
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