Supporting accurate, remote clinical decision making for specialist care and enabling virtual visits for children and young people
What problem was the trust looking to solve?
Before COVID-19, Alder Hey was not an organisation with a significant amount of home working, but it became a necessity to keep staff and those visiting the hospital as safe as possible. The trust’s challenge was to ensure its young patients continued to receive high quality care, while at the same time enabling any staff member who could work from home to do so, ensuring they had the tools to perform as effectively as they would on site.
What was the trust's response?
The digital team purchased, built, and distributed 1,250 devices for staff to use at home. Previously a few staff used Microsoft Teams, but it was clear the trust had to accelerate adoption and training to allow effective communication between teams within the hospital, and those outside the organisation. The rapid deployment of this technology meant the team could deploy both telemedicine and virtual visiting across the trust:
Telemedicine: the Neonatal Partnership, which brings together Liverpool Women's Hospital and Alder Hey in clinically supporting neonates, was one of the high priority areas. Together with the trust's innovation team, the digital team worked with InTouch health to implement a solution that enabled patients to be clearly viewed and assessed by clinicians without needing to be physically present.
Virtual visiting: To keep patients and staff as safe as possible, the hospital was forced to restrict on site visiting of children and young people. Understandably, this was distressing for families and the digital team were asked whether there was anything it could do to help. The team built tablets installed with Skype, Whatsapp and Spotify and assigned free generic accounts for patients to use.
What was the impact?
Telemedicine: The specialist equipment deployed by the trust has allowed clinicians who are shielding at home to contribute to the ward staffing rota by dialling in remotely and participating in ward rounds. It has also reduced a number of unnecessary transfers of patients between hospital sites, improving patient safety and reducing infection risk.
Virtual visiting: The new tablets were deployed to the patient experience team who then delivered the virtual visiting solution to the patients by working closely with the clinical staff across the trust. This meant patients could still communicate and share music with their families, which was so important during these unprecedented times. One patient relative commented:
I can't even begin to tell you what a difference such a small act has made to her. She was so low earlier today and this has enabled her to keep going during this difficult time. She said it has "refilled her heart". I don't know who was responsible for making it happen but please pass on my thanks and the overwhelming gratitude from her. You are all amazing.
What is planned next?
The achievements at Alder Hey have been astounding. This is not only due to the digital team, but also the result of the can-do attitude and culture across the organisation in adopting new and often unfamiliar digital solutions to support the COVID-19 response. Relationships between the digital team and those across the trust have grown stronger than ever through this extremely challenging time. The trust will now continue to build on what has been implemented. This includes increasing the use of telemedicine, virtual visiting, and virtual consultations as well as supporting staff who continue to work from home. Alder Hey hopes to harness the positive outlook many staff and patients now have towards digital technologies in moving the Trust even further along in its digital journey.