Digital Health Coffee Time Briefing ☕

Your morning summary of digital health news, information and events to know about if you want to be “in the know”.

👇 News

🤝 Telefónica Tech, a leader in digital transformation and part of the Telefónica Group, has been announced as the successful vendor for the tender to provide numerous infrastructure technology solutions to Children’s Health Ireland (CHI) for the new digital children’s hospital. In this five-year deal with Children’s Health Ireland, Telefónica Tech UK&I will build and manage the hospital’s IT infrastructure, with a significant focus on cyber security. Telefónica Tech will oversee all servers, storage, security, PCs, printers, workstations on wheels and laptops in the new hospital. The platform will also support the clinical applications that will integrate to the hospital’s new Electronic Patient Record system (powered by EPIC).

🧫 North West Anglia NHS Foundation Trust has replaced two, legacy laboratory information systems with a single instance of Clinisys WinPath. The trust, which serves a catchment of 800,000 patients in North Cambridgeshire and South Lincolnshire, found itself with two LIMS when it was formed out of the merger of Peterborough and Stamford Hospitals and Hinchingbrooke Health Care in 2017. The new LIMS, plus an extension of the ICE order communications and results reporting system to Hinchingbrooke, will bring benefits for patients, staff and GPs by reducing reliance upon paper and delivering faster results to GPs and patients, regardless of where blood samples are taken or tested. In addition, the new system harmonises working practices and makes it easier for clinicians to view the results of tests taken across the trust’s three hospital sites.

🚥 Mandoe Media, a leading provider of user-friendly template-driven digital signage solutions, has formed a strategic partnership with Myark, a renowned UK digital services expert, to introduce digital signage at Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Trust, UK. This collaboration represents a significant advancement in healthcare communication and patient engagement, demonstrating a joint commitment to leveraging technology to improve patient care and satisfaction. The partnership aims to enhance the patient experience by seamlessly integrating dynamic digital displays within the trust’s facilities to convey essential messages effectively. Leveraging Myark’s expertise in content management and digital services, the collaboration will introduce innovative solutions tailored to address the diverse needs of Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Trust healthcare providers.

🏠 Asda is today becoming the first supermarket in the UK to offer an online pharmacy home delivery service, following a partnership with the UK’s largest digital pharmacy, Pharmacy2U. The new electronic prescription service rolls out today to customers of 50 Asda stores across eight regions, who will be able to order prescriptions alongside their online groceries. The partnership between two established Yorkshire-born brands will offer patients greater convenience and better access to pharmacy services nationwide. Asda customers will be able to order their prescriptions 24/7 through pharmacy.asda.com Once they complete their order online, the prescription is sent to their GP for electronic approval. After final checks from Pharmacy2U’s clinical team, the items will be dispatched directly to the customer’s door, free of charge, using a fully tracked service complete with delivery notifications and updates.

📉 Researchers have demonstrated that an AI model designed to detect clinical deterioration was associated with a significantly decreased risk of inpatient escalations in care, according to a study recently published in JAMA Internal Medicine. Recognition of the signs of clinical deterioration can be improved through the use of clinically relevant interventions. The research team indicated that early warning scores have been developed to help flag high-risk patients, but evidence of their effectiveness is limited. To address this, the researchers set out to assess an AI-driven clinical deterioration detection tool’s ability to reduce the risk of care escalations among hospitalized adults and gauge the causal inference between the two. The analysis included data from 9,938 patients hospitalised across four internal medicine units within one academic medical center from January 17, 2021, through November 16, 2022. The AI-enabled intervention consisted of Epic Deterioration Index (EDI)-based alerts and an associated clinical workflow. Overall, the intervention was associated with an absolute risk reduction of 10.4 percentage points in care escalations for patients at the EDI score threshold. 

❓ Did you know that?

The weekly winter sitrep data can be viewed online here, covering the period between the week ending 26 November 2023 and the week ending 31 March 2024.

NHS 111 call handlers answered 435,010 calls last week (59.6% within 60 seconds), the highest so far this year and the second highest all winter (444,285 in the w/e Dec 31). In the same week last year 337,318 calls to 111 were answered, 48.1% within 60 seconds.

Today’s data shows calls to NHS 111 increased significantly over the Bank Holiday weekend – Friday 29 March saw 84,723 calls answered – 70% more than the day before (49,605). Over the three days data is available for (Friday to Sunday) 239,173 calls were answered.

📖 What we’re reading

Investing in community health with digital tools – PATH and the Zambian government are creating a digital health system that equips community health workers with the tools they need to deliver high-quality care

🚨 Upcoming events  

16 April, Cambridge – CHIME CIO Summit – CHIME International  

24-25 April, ExCeL London – Digital Healthcare Show