North Lincolnshire Trust a finalist for top technology award

Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust has been shortlisted for the E-health Insider awards which reward excellence in healthcare IT. The Trust is a finalist in the Digital NHS Trust of the Year category.

Staff at the Trust have embraced technology in a number of ways, from the development of the bespoke award-winning Web V ‘virtual ward’ system which saw flat screen computers rolled out to every ward, to equipping community nurses with portable computers, midwives with digi-pens and portering staff with mobile technology.

These innovations have freed up clinical staff time so they can spend more time with patients, reduced paperwork, increased efficiency and ultimately improved the quality of care patients receive and are all part of the Trust’s plan to move to a total electronic patient record (EPR).

The Trust is also in the top 10 per cent of trusts on the clinical digital maturity index - an indicator of how well trusts are using technology to improve patient safety.

Karen Wilson is the chair of the Trust’s EPR project, she said: “This is such a high honour for us and although we may be a small trust we think big and we have made a tremendous amount of progress with moving to an electronic patient record.

“It is wonderful to be recognised for the forward-thinking trust we are. We use technology where we can to reduce inefficiency and equip our staff with the information they need to give our patients a good service.”

Matthew Bovington, WebV training and implementation manager at the Trust, said: “The WebV system has evolved from a basic software that displayed pathology results on the wards into a bespoke web based application that can now perform a variety of clinically based tasks including alerting staff when observations are overdue along with being able to record multiple assessments, giving access to a variety of reports and test results and allowing staff to view a whole ward or even an entire hospital virtually so it can be used as a bed management system.

“As our team has grown so have our ambitions and we’ve worked alongside clinical staff to make sure the system works for them. Not only are we providing staff with a tool to help them carry out their day-to-day jobs but we are saving the trust money by continually developing the system in-house.

“In addition to being recognised with a number of awards we are also attracting attention from trusts across the country who are keen to see the system with a view to using it themselves.”

The Trust will find out if it has won on Thursday October 1 at an awards ceremony in London.