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Digital roles

Digital innovations

Introduction

These case studies showcase the contributions that nurses and midwives are making to technology enabled care services (TECS) in health and social care settings.

We interview nurses and midwives who are digital innovators or who have been involved in projects that are introducing digital working practices.

Together these interviews:

  • demonstrate the scope of nursing contributions to digital innovation
  • explain the function of each digital innovation and the process of development/and or implementation
  • describe the benefits of digital ways of working

Our interviewees are change agents. We hope by sharing these experiences we may motivate other nurses and midwives to take part and shape the direction of health and social care.

We hope to add to the case studies here. We want to paint a rich picture of the many applications of digital innovation across health and social care.

🎬 - Indicates the innovation contains a video case study

🎧 - Indicates the innovation contains a podcast case study

Please watch the video below for more information on the resource:

Acute

Implementing large-scale digital change can be a once-in-a-generation effort for a care organisation, making a huge difference to the way clinicians and managers use information. With the divide between care providers weakening and the health and social care system coming together to form an integrated one, implementing this sort of change has perhaps never had more potential to underpin new systems of population-based care.

Kings Fund (2018). Digital change in health and social care.

Tim has been a paediatric nurse for 17 years and still practices in the NHS. He has worked in the Paediatric Emergency Department, PICU, Surgical Pre-assessment, Bed Management and as a Clinical Informatics lead for an NHS Trust in the UK. He joined Cerner in 2015 as a Clinical Consultant in the transformation team.

Care home

“The social care sector has been slower to embrace the benefits of technology and evidence demonstrates that this is partly to do with culture and attitude, and partly to do with capability and capacity.

Yet, the Government is committed to ‘all patient and care records (being) digital, interoperable and real-time by 2020/1 and new care delivery models that are outcome based are also driving the need for change.

Integrated care means we need information to flow more effectively across health and care to support the delivery of better care, and this can be made much easier via the use of technology”.

Skills for Care (2018). Becoming a ‘digital’ social care organisation.  A guide for managers and leaders.

"EHR is a comprehensive medical and cross-institutional record or similar documentation of the past and present physical and mental state of health of an individual in electronic form. EHRs also provide for ready availability of these data for medical treatment and other closely related purposes. EHRs are real-time, patient-centred records that provide immediate and secure information to authorized users.

EHRs typically contain a patient’s medical history, diagnoses and treatment, medications, allergies, immunizations, as well as radiology images and laboratory results." - Digital Health Europe Glossary

Community

“For various and complex reasons, health services in the UK have found it challenging to keep up with the pace of change. Information technology is transforming care, as new treatments and diagnostic tools become available, procedures are undertaken in a less traumatic way, communication between professionals is easier than ever before and geography is less of a barrier, patients both own health equipment and are increasingly accessing their own records…

Information technology presents one of the greatest opportunities to make services more efficient and help manage patient need in a sustainable and equitable way”.

The Queen’s Nursing Institute (2018) Nursing in the Digital Age. Using technology to support patient in the home.

"Telehealth is a combination of equipment, monitoring and response that can help individuals to remain independent at home. So telehealth is a means of relaying specific physiological data from patients in their homes to clinicians in hospital, general practice or community / mental health settings, to support objective decisions about their clinical management. 

It can enable a clinical team to establish a ‘virtual ward’ of specific patients with remote monitoring of their vital signs. When telehealth is in place a patient’s vital signs and/or test results are available to clinicians caring for them from afar - in real time or close to real time; and patients are much more aware of how their body is functioning." - Dr Ruth Chambers. .

Morag is the Programme Manager for Lanarkshire’s Telehealth Programme which included United4Health as well as the European falls prevention study – SmartCare. Her involvement in these programmes has led to a subsequent expansion of Home & Mobile Health Monitoring across the Lanarkshire partnership area as part of the Scottish Government’s Technology Enabled Care Programme.

Since qualifying in 1974 as a nurse at Glasgow Royal Infirmary,  Morag has worked in various hospital and community settings and was instrumental in the establishment of the first early supported discharge team at Hairmyres Hospital, East Kilbride, Lanarkshire. Moving to NHSGG&C in 2003,  she used this experience in the roll out the Community Older People’s Team in Rutherglen/Cambuslang: a Joint Futures initiative with South Lanarkshire Social Work department.  Transferred back to Lanarkshire in 2009, Morag continued to play a lead role in setting up the innovative Integrated Community Support Team, before moving on to champion telehealth developments.

Healthcare app development is the process by which an app is built for mobile devices (smartphone, tablet, wearable) with the intent of informing citizens and healthcare professionals about preventive healthcare measures, treatment support and tracking the progress being made.

Emma Selby - Virtual reality podcast

· Emma Selby - Digital Innovations (Virtual Reality)                                                                                                                                      

Emma Selby is a multi-award winning Clinical Nurse Consultant in Mental Health and specialises in young people and parental mental health support. Emma began working with young people and tech developers to explore the role technology could play in preventative mental health back in 2015 and since then has set up her own company Digital Mentality which links clinical specialities to creative experts in order to develop a number of award winning national and international digital programs that support early intervention and prevention in mental health.

You can read more about Emma's work at , as well as , a new mental health and emotional wellbeing animation for children and young people.

Claire Russell - Digitising District Nursing service

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Cathy Woods - Caseload Allocation Tool (CAT)

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Ian is the senior clinical director at EMIS Health, a district nurse and Queen’s Nurse. Having worked in a number of clinical and managerial roles within the NHS, including chief clinical informatics officer (CCIO) at a Community NHS Trust, his personal interest in healthcare technology led him to join EMIS Health in 2015. With a focus on clinical leadership and cultural change, Ian and his teams ensure that everything at EMIS Health is clinically driven – improving experiences for both patients and clinicians.

Although his work sees him supporting all healthcare disciplines, Ian’s passion for district nursing remains strong and he continues to work closely with many national bodies to champion the care provided in community settings.

Education

“We can predict certain areas where the future nurse will need increased and different knowledge and skills. IT, telehealth and telecare are likely to be increasingly important as organisations accelerate the adoption of health IT, informatics and social networking sites to support the demands of an evolving healthcare system. The skills to use and develop these new ways of working should be part of the expectation for registered nurses.

There are, however, many unknowns about the knowledge and skills that future registered nurses will need, particularly taking into account possible future changes to technology and care delivery. This means that the emphasis in education must be as much on equipping newly qualified practitioners to be ready for lifelong learning as on specific technical skills…

HEIs are continually looking to develop new and innovative ideas to create effective supportive learning environment for students”.

Council of Deans of Health (2016). Educating the Future Nurse – a paper for discussion.