Digitising the NHS has been an important and challenging goal for the nation and this has been on the agenda for many years. However, the complexity and resistant to change within the healthcare setting has proven that it's not all plain sailing. Over the last few years, there has been some exciting progress form NHS organisations to join the Global Digital Exemplar programme, by stepping-up to it clearly shows the commitment that NHS organisations can deliver world-class digital solutions and use them to make a real difference to patient care.
In this blog I want to share my experience so far and what makes a successful digital programme within the NHS. I have taken a screenshot of a slide (below) as part of a presentation I did a few months back. It is a high-level overview of the 3 core components that make up a successful digital delivery.
To expand further the 3 core components provides:
1. Strategy: Gives an organisation a competitive advantage, for example, some NHS Trusts are striving towards a GDE (Global Digital Exemplar) to be paperless or paper-light.
2. People and a culture of innovation to sustain it: Senior leadership must empower the workforce, in return, they will provide value in new ways. For example, leaders must create an environment where ideas can be expressed and innovations created without the fear of being ridiculed and where their voices can be heard.
3. Technology and Comms: the means in which way it is delivered, for example; the need to move away from manual prescribing and medicines administration to a digital solution. Post-Covid the pandemic response to enable Virtual Visiting and Virtual Consultation to allow patients to speak with their loved ones and for outpatient appointments to be continued via the use of digital tools.
There are various methods and approaches to sustain a successful digital solution, in my experience these are:
The digital workforce- the organisation needs to understand innovation and opportunities that could be delivered by a digital agenda.
Digital suppliers- there is a need to work collaboratively with suppliers in achieving successful outcomes, this, in my opinion, is not aimed just at the NHS but rather across all healthcare settings. The suppliers are the key enablers for digital transformation.
Data sharing- actively engaging with patients and the public about the benefits of data sharing and use patient stories for that all crucial buy-in and support.
Let’s not forget that leadership is crucial for a successful deployment, it can be argued that senior leaders need to promote organisational change effectively and clearly so that the resistant to change is minimised. Another important component I need to discuss is engagement, this is pivotal for any change management initiatives and from my experience of delivering digital projects I have learned that:
· Use staff engagement to form the initial vision
· Define all stakeholders
· Identify a comms plan
· Set a deadline and communicate it to the stakeholders
when I was leading on the EPMA (Electronic Prescribing and Medicines Administration) project, an important factor we had to consider as a team was hardware. As we all know technology moves at a very rapid pace, so the need to purchase and how it will integrate with other EPR projects was identified and a considerable cost saving applied.
I would like to share a project retro I did with my team as part of my handover (the project was on Virtual Consultations) whilst I was at Kettering General Hospital, I feel very proud what we had accomplished so much in so little time:
It has been a massive experience for me in delivering a digital solution and one that I will remember for a very long time. I would like to finish this blog by saying that no matter when and how we deliver a solution when implementing a digital programme the patient’s safety, dignity and consent must be at the centre of any decision making process.
