MEDIA AND COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGY
Trust’s proven success with media solution
A long-term collaboration between Lincoln Partnership NHS Foundation Trust and Dutch company, Recornect, has resulted in a new, accessible media and communication solution for seclusion, de-escalation, and other rooms within the Trust’s medium-security units. How did this particular collaboration come about, and what makes Recornect’s underlying technology so successful? Remy Vermeer, the company’s Project manager, reports, with input from founder, Erik Kuijpers.
Recornect enjoys worldwide renown in the field of psychiatry for our CoWin de-escalation solution, which is being implemented in a growing number of institutions. CoWin (‘Communication Window’) is a touchscreen media wall housed in a virtually indestructible casing, which is built into crisis unit de-escalation rooms. The key advantage of CoWin is that it makes interaction and contact between patients and caregivers or family possible, whether in a personalised digital environment or not. CoWin also runs on a unique software platform GRASP, which offers new, innovative possibilities
for patients in mental healthcare ‘crisis’ settings. The options available include viewing photos, listening to music, or playing games, all specially designed to regulate high energy and aggression. The facility’s clinical team decides which services and options should be available to each service-user.
One of the world’s first users Lincoln Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (LPFT) was one of the first organisations in the world to choose Recornect’s CoWin de-escalation solution for its acute psychiatric unit, so the fact that the Trust partnered with Recornect to create this new, widely deployable solution is no coincidence. “Recornect’s CoWin de-escalation solution has now been used extensively in our acute psychiatry department for five years, with excellent results, both for our clients and for our care staff,” explained Clinical Project manager NHS (Estates), Tracy Colpitts. “For Castle and Ellis, our new intensive care wards, we want to keep the same familiar work dynamic that we are used to in our acute psychiatry unit. However, they are medium-security wards, so the extremely robust construction of the CoWin system is not actually needed. Simply put, we were looking for a secure, interactive communication solution, with the advantages of the GRASP software platform. Based on this, we worked with Recornect to develop a solution with far less onerous hardware requirements. That became what is now CoWin Play.”
Erik Kuijpers, founder and managing director of Recornect,
Recornect’s CoWin (‘Communication Window’) is a touchscreen media wall housed in a ‘virtually indestructible’ casing, which is built into crisis unit de-escalation rooms.
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said of the collaboration: “Through our very close working with partnership with the Lincoln Partnership NHS Foundation Trust team, we discovered that the strength of our solutions lies in our holistic approach. What we develop is not software or hardware, but a working dynamic, facilitating the optimal constructive contact between patient / service-user and healthcare staff. Our new, accessible system now makes it possible to use this familiar working dynamic not only in crisis situations, but also in a medium- security environment, where the emphasis is much more on interaction, relaxation, and education. We therefore also install this ‘lighter’ CoWin system in landscape mode, giving a familiar feel of, say, a television or computer screen. In rooms where service-users stay longer, the layout is hugely important.”
Not a difficult decision Alan Pattison, Clinical-Operational Estates lead, explained that the decision process around the wider roll-out of Recornect’s new solution was not really complicated. He said: “Since we already had considerable experience with Recornect’s de-escalation solution, we could easily justify the investment in this new system by backing it up with favourable practical experience and figures. Our new units in Boston (UK), which are yet to be built, will also be equipped with rooms containing the new CoWin solution. “It is great to have technology in
house that actually makes our work easier and more enjoyable – not only for the clinical and care staff, but also for our service-users. For example, in the case of compulsory admission, there’s a lot of paperwork involved, due to strict legislation. For service-users with an emergency admission, this is often a great deal of information to take in. With CoWin and GRASP, the service-user can access the information once they have had time to calm down in their own rooms, and at a time that suits them. From monitoring committee visits, after CoWin was installed, a significant improvement was
NOVEMBER 2023 | THE NETWORK
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