01732 759725 magazine 11 DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION Widely considered the best sprinter of all time, with gold medals in 100 and 200 metres from three consecutive Olympic Games, the Jamaican athletics icon Usain St Leo Bolt is a speed phenomenon. Now retired, he still holds the 100 metres record at 9.58 seconds set in 2009 at the Berlin World Athletics Championships. Bolt achieved an average speed of 23.35 mph although data shows he hit a mind boggling 27.8 mph mid-race; no wonder he’s affectionately nicknamed Lightning Bolt. Another record breaker from 2009 – and in this case it’s actual physical records – is St Helens and Knowsley Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust. It was the first trust in the UK to stop using paper medical records in clinical practice after migrating to an electronic document and records management system (EDRMS) to coincide with the opening of two hospitals costing £338 million at Whiston and St Helens. The implementation of EDRMS software and a scan-on-demand approach allowed the Trust to stop hand delivering 7,000 paper files to outpatient departments each week (which it would then file on return) and close its records library, a building containing over one million folders, each holding on average 250 pages. The EDRMS cost £1.2 million, but with annual savings of £1.4 million in storage, transportation and staffing costs (existing staff were redeployed), the new digital system paid for itself within a year and has been saving a vast amount of money ever since. Moreover, by ensuring that the right medical records for the right patient were available to the right doctor at the right time, the Trust has been able to reduce the number of elective care appointment cancellations because notes were lacking; improve clinical productivity as more patients are seen; and enhance patient safety and overall clinical care. All of which is a useful segue to the Record breakers focus of this article: the announcement in last October’s Budget Statement of an extra £2.1 billion for the NHS to improve its use of digital technology and data. Digital transformation is a broad area, but to focus on patient records specifically, it is clear that many Trusts are still far too reliant on paper. Our own Freedom of Information requests show that 50% of the country’s 233 Trusts have yet to transition to computerbased systems as St Helens and Knowsley did 13 years ago. This begs the question why so many have been slow to embrace change and what should be done with the new funds to ensure the best return on investment? Why has it taken so long to get rid of paper? The Coronavirus pandemic provided further evidence that the NHS has simply not put enough effort and investment into digitisation despite Health Secretaries – specifically Jeremy Hunt – challenging the NHS to be paperless. He wanted this by 2018, although his predecessor Andrew Lansley pledged to start an information revolution back in 2010. There are various reasons why this has not happened: n First, whilst funding was available at an umbrella level, it didn’t universally filter down to support local digitisation projects. n Second, other IT priorities have consumed budget. n Third, a lack of people resources and ownership to drive projects through has hindered progress, with records digitisation delayed time and again. n Fourth, some Trusts have managed the process poorly by not indexing or classifying information properly, which has meant the digital solution offered is actually worse than delivering paper. Time-pressed clinicians have been presented with a large PDF displaying pages of historical notes which it is impossible to navigate when Dr Vijay Magon, managing director of CCube Solutions, weighs up how the UK Government’s extra £2.1 billion for NHS IT should be best spent Photo credit: REUTERS / Alamy Stock Photo continued...
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