The antenatal diabetes team at Derry’s Altnagelvin Area Hospital have been recognised for innovation in healthcare and quality improvement.
They redesigned their diabetes antenatal service by enabling telehealth care by roll-out of simplified video communications implemented in partnership IT health solutions firm, Hospital Services Limited (HSL) in collaboration with video conferencing business, Pexip.
This has become especially important in helping to maintain and improve patient contact despite limited access due to Covid-19.
The Western Health and Social Care Trust’s Gestational Diabetes Pathway team was commended for their display of adaptability and innovative thinking to preserve a high level of patient care at a worry-filled time for expectant mothers.
They have since been named as recipients of a prestigious British Medical Journal Award in the category of Innovation in Quality Improvement.
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Begun in January 2019, the partnership between HSL and the Western Trust has seen consultants incorporate a state-of-the-art telehealth (video appointment) solution by Pexip into their daily patient care.
Led internally by Dr Athinyaa Thiraviaraj, Consultant Physician in Diabetes & Endocrinology, the clinicians at the Western Trust have carried out over 1000 consultations via the integrated interface.
She said: “Working in partnership with women who attend our service, we have been able to develop, test, and standardise video-consultations. This has helped our service to continue with minimal interruptions through both the first and second surge of the pandemic.
“I can’t see our service defaulting to phone clinics. It’s just not the same when you are engaging in complex conversations like a health care consultation.”
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HSL integrated their video comm technologies, or HSL Telehealth, into the Trust’s existing patient administration systems (PAS) and electronic patient records (EPR), so that the new video call capabilities became part of the existing healthcare workflow.
“It is an imperative that whichever technology is adopted by a healthcare team, it must integrate seamlessly with existing systems and processes in order to become highly effective, intuitively used by care providers, if the solution is to gain widespread acceptance and be scalable across the whole spectrum of patients,” said Sam McMaster, Director of Telehealth at Hospital Services Limited.
According to HSL, the project has seen a proportionally significant impact on the environment, saving about 15,811 miles of travel for 654 appointments. This equates to 4.37 tonnes of Co2.
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The call is generated by software in HSL’s network which the company said offers a complete, secure communications platform for health establishments, providing virtual meeting rooms, gateway services, and web applications.
They added that full, constant monitoring and support is guaranteed and the HSL solution is compliant with the network security standards adopted by the NHS and the UK government. On completion of the consultation, the clinician closes the video window, completes an associated outcome form, or writes up the notes in the relevant EPR before moving to the next patient.
The Telehealth solution also avoids requiring patients to download new apps or programmes to communicate, eliminating concerns regarding usability and security for patients, and encouraging wider collaboration among healthcare professionals.
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Source: Written from press release
