TRACK & TRACE
Can digital platforms help uscontrol infections?
With every aspect of our life touched by technology, in 2019, the NHS set out its commitments to more readily embrace digitally-enabled care. Exploring this through the lens of infection prevention and taking into account the immense pressure the health service now finds itself under, Neelam Sheikh considers how digitally-enabled care could help improve efficiencies and control infections.
The NHS Long Term Plan,1 released
in 2019, set out the health service’s ambitions for digitally-enabled care, to help transform its services, reduce ‘bureaucracy’ and the burden of managing multiple complex, interconnected systems. The plan noted that the NHS would not be able to ‘fully embrace’ new technologies if hospital departments and services remained largely paper-based, aiming for all healthcare providers to advance to a ‘core level of digitisation’ by 2024, which involved the acceleration of electronic patient records. The report also stated that providers to the NHS would be held to nationally agreed standards that could integrate with Local Health and Care Records (LHCR), in order to enable patient- and clinician-centric ‘digital user journeys’ across health settings.2 The last year has rocked our health service. COVID-19 has placed the NHS
under greater strain than ever before, with ICU capacity at critical levels and many non-COVID services being postponed as a result of the pandemic. Though infection prevention has always been a key challenge facing Trusts and hospitals, 2020 put it firmly under the spotlight.
Easing admin and reducing healthcare burdens Considering the health service’s technology aims in its Long Term Plan, could a move to digitally-enabled care improve efficiencies and help to reduce some of the administrative pressures facing healthcare workers currently? A report by the Deloitte Centre for Health Solutions3
looked at how digital
solutions could transform healthcare, placing particular focus on how technology could take time away from administrative tasks,
which could then be used for patient care. Assessing a mobile working solution for community nurses, it showed it reduced time spent on paperwork by 60%, and increased time in front of the patient by 29%, equivalent to community nurses being able to see two extra patients each day.4 It also looked at a trial in Northampton General Hospital (NGH) that used an integrated technology system to replace paper-based patient observations, in a drive to improve efficiencies and transform patient case. Before the trial, as is the case in many Trusts, nurses at NGH provided handwritten patient charts, which took up considerable time, could be inconsistent and prone to individual errors.
NGH trialled the use of a completely paperless electronic patient observation system accessed via tablet or personal digital assistants, which would automatically summon help if the health of a patient deteriorated. Used across 28 wards across the hospital, it reduced errors by 300% and improved efficiencies in patient tracking.5
Track & traceability
Could integrated digital solutions also play a key role in improving infection prevention strategies? While ‘track and trace’ has now come to be most associated with COVID-19, pre-pandemic it referred to the oversight and management of key equipment in hospital settings.
The complete track and trace of equipment and devices poses a considerable challenge for an under-resourced NHS, particularly in surgical departments and endoscopy units where there is a risk of healthcare-associated infections (HCAIs) from contaminated products. Difficulties in keeping an up-to-date inventory can cause problems with locating equipment, result
APRIL 2021
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