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NHS Innovations East Midlands has been, since its initiation in the Spring of 2003, an advocate for innovations that achieve many of the objectives that have recently been highlighted in Lord Darzi’s report.
With the emphasis on ‘high quality patient care’, ‘freedom to focus on quality’ and overall quality in the NHS being top of the agenda in Lord Darzi’s ‘High Quality Care For All’ report, the focus falls even more so on how these objectives are going to be successfully achieved.
An important theme in Lord Darzi’s review is the role of innovation in the improvement of services and patient care with an emphasis on new ideas and technologies that directly impact patient outcomes. NHS Innovations has been developing as a service for the NHS over the last 8 years with progressive roll-out of innovations management services providing support for the development and adoption of new devices and ideas within the NHS. NHS Innovations East Midlands has a portfolio of over 40 active projects and each is an idea originated by NHS staff and intended to improve the delivery of patient care across a wide range of disciplines from ophthalmic surgery to workforce planning.
The primary role of NHS Innovations East Midlands is in the commercialisation of ideas from within the NHS and the identification of suitable commercial partners to help develop the ideas. This then returns money to the originating inventor and hospital Trust, Often the sums involved are not large but cumulatively the development of these inventions return significant sums across the country. However, often the more significant value in these inventions is in the cost savings they offer to Trusts that adopt them and in the improvement in patient outcomes they deliver. If in the process of rolling these innovations out within the NHS and beyond to the wider market, they either help save monies or generate revenue for the Trust then they are deemed to be a great success. The most important aspect of an innovation for the inventor is the desire to effect real and significant change to the lives of the individuals that really matter i.e. patients. Not only that, but this aspect provides incentive to staff over and above financial rewards especially when they see how their innovations can completely revolutionise their departments’ work.
The Patient Medicine Bag and the Nutritional Toolkit are both award
winning examples of the hub’s ‘quality patient care’ innovations.
The
Patient Medicine Bag (PMB) clearly demonstrates how a concept, a
by-product of a Hospital Medicines Management Collaborative (HMMC)
programme of work, funded by the Department of Health, became a
tremendous success for Nottingham University Hospital NHS Trust. It is
an example where the combination of a development of a product item and
the re-configuration of patient pathway can combine to deliver
significant patient benefits at a very small direct cost.
The PMB
combines with a series of laminated instructions for ambulance staff
and ward staff to encourage patients to take their current medications
with them if they are to be admitted to hospital. The bag itself was
designed to provide patients with instructions on how to deal with
their medications prior to admission. The laminates for staff provide
guidance on what to do when presented with a PMB and how to manage
patient admissions and discharges.
Having the patients medications
physically with them means that staff can correctly identify drug type
and dose and also means that patients can be discharged without the
need for additional prescriptions from the hospital pharmacy.
See details of the product on http://www.medicine-bag.co.uk/
Overall the PMB project has produced:
•
Cost saving for the Trust. The financial savings are indicative of
£7.40 per patient in reduced repeat dispensing, but the real savings
are in time and lives.
• Reduced delays in discharges due to TTO (To Take Out prescriptions)
• Increased the number of complete and recorded drug histories
• Increased communication of medication changes to GPs on discharge
• Increased communication of medication changes to patients on discharge
• Reduced drug related errors
• Reduced turnaround time of work through the dispensary
•
Positive feedback from ambulance staff and patients, particularly those
with long term conditions e.g. cardiac patients also.
The Nutritional Toolkit
The
Nutritional Toolkit was developed by the team at the Assessment and
Treatment Unit, Ash Green which is part of the Specialist Learning
Disability Service, Derbyshire County Primary Care Trust. The team
commenced work on the Essence of Care Nutritional Benchmark (2001) and
the user friendly innovation was produced as a result of the project in
conjunction with ‘Valuing People’ (Department of Health 2001).
The
objectives for this project were very clear and simple. The team wanted
to give their patients a greater degree of confidence and independence
combined with the ability to make more of their own decisions. They
also wanted to find a very simple way to further encourage one to one
interaction between professionals and patients. The objective of the
Essence of Care project was to help the team develop and improve
service provision and to identify various patient needs.
The
nutritional toolkit is portable and very easy to use. It is suitable
for use in the home as well as for use in Hospitals, Clinics or day
services with adults and children who have varying mild to severe
disabilities. The kit can also be used for educational purposes.
The
innovation is instantly recognisable with cheerfully designed
components that can be very easily replaced. The contents are all safe,
durable and easy to clean. The cards had to satisfy the requirements of
the many varied meals so the pictures are simple enough for the
individual to be able to identify both the food type and the
ingredients. Special dietary requirements also had to be considered.
The objectives behind the design of the cards was to clearly
incorporate and emphasise the Government’s ‘5 A Day’ recommendation.
(Department of Health, 2007, 5 a day health benefits DOH).
The innovation, which was a finalist for the Health and Social Care
Awards 2008, clearly satisfied the competition’s following criteria:
• Had been developed as a result of an identified problem
• Enabled the delivery of an approach to health care that would not otherwise have been possible
• Had a holistic approach to the use of this technology which has addressed explicitly the ‘people’ and ‘process’ issues
• Demonstrated clear thinking on the adoption issues surrounding the technology
• Demonstrated originality and inventiveness.
The
original kit was used very successfully in and around the various
department of the unit to assess its effectiveness, potential value,
educational benefit and general use from both the professional and
individual perspective. Working in collaboration with the hub and
Mustard Merchandise the designers, the recently developed version has
been scheduled for a further extensive trial with NHS, Private and
Public sector organisations in October/November 2008.
Dr Carl M. Edwards, Director
Tel: 0115 912 4242
www.em-nhs-hub.org
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