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St Helens & Knowsley Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust wins healthcare IT category at the 2010 Health Business Awards

Thursday 23. December 2010 - · The third award received this year for landmark electronic medical records project

C Cube Solutions and Kodak (NYSE:EK) today announce that Merseyside-based St Helens & Knowsley Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust has won the healthcare IT category at the 2010 Health Business Awards.
The Trust won because of a unique project to install an electronic medical records (EMR) system so that patients coming into hospital are seen by clinicians and health professionals who have their complete medical history available immediately on a computer. The system improves services and guarantees the quality and safety of patient care.
As far as is known, this makes The Trust the first in the NHS to stop using paper health records in operational practice.
Held at the Arsenal Emirates Stadium last week, and hosted by BBC Breakfast presenter, Bill Turnbull, the Awards – run by Health Business magazine – recognise excellence in the provision of NHS facilities.
Colin Boyton, Health Business Awards’ marketing manager, says, “The Awards focus on rewarding innovation happening today in the National Health Service incorporating everything from IT to building infrastructure, security, cleaning, and procurement – the business end of the NHS. Competition for an award is rife and The Trust’s electronic medical records project stood out as the clear winner.”
Following a 22-month roll out, this landmark project has been hugely successful and readily accepted by over 500 doctors and 130 medical secretaries who use the system day-to-day. Consultation is underway to extend it to the Trust’s whole health economy over time.
Working with partners, C Cube Solutions and Kodak, the Trust has delivered an innovative way of converting its whole paper health record stock using a scan-on-demand approach, with an electronic document management system and custom-built portal then used by clinicians to access these records whether it be in outpatient clinics, wards or operating theatres.
This means guaranteed availability of the right patient file to the right doctor at the right time. The impact is huge – the quality of patient care is enhanced, safety ensured, organisational efficiency improved and costs slashed.
Historically, the Trust was in effect running an internal logistics business ferrying files to and from its medical library to clinics and wards which was unsustainable and inefficient given the vast quantity of patients seen annually. It was just not practicable to shift 7,000 medical files every week for patients attending hospitals on different sites.
This is the third award the Trust has received this year regarding the project having won the public sector IT project of the year categories at both the UK IT Industry Awards and the Document Management Awards 2010.
The system utilises a customised and bespoke built version of C Cube Solutions’ EDMS, with Kodak high performance i660 and i780 document scanners used to digitise paper files and cope with the substantial scanning volumes required. To date, 41.3 million pages have been scanned equating to around 134,389 medical records.
Doctors throughout the NHS often have to make decisions about patient care without necessarily having all their background history available which obviously represents a safety issue. If the Trust has seen a patient previously, it can now offer the right treatment based on past medical history as all their details are instantly available on screen.
In other words, the system allows doctors to make better and more informed decisions about the appropriate care for patients, and ensures that patients – for example – don’t have to be admitted for exploratory tests because notes were not immediately available.
Communication with patients and their families is enhanced, with clinicians able to access the system via secure VPN links which improves team working and productivity.
With the sponsorship of the Trust’s CEO, Ann Marr, the system was created by the Trust’s informatics service led by the director of informatics, Neil Darvill, and in close partnership with C Cube Solutions. It cost £1.2 million.
While the primary driver behind the project was patient safety and care, operational costs will substantially reduce with the Trust expecting to save of £1.4 million annually by closing its traditional paper library, redeploying staff and avoiding the transportation costs associated with delivering files.
Neil Darvill said, “St Helens & Knowsley Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust is miles ahead of others in the EMR area and has been visited by over 30 other Trusts keen to see how we’ve delivered such a huge business change programme so successfully. We’re delighted to win the HBA Awards – the third time we’ve been recognised this year for the EDMS project which is now fully live.”