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Supporting digital transformation of health systems

What Good Looks Like

Our Helix Centre has been supporting NHSX’s What Good Looks Like programme, a framework that sets out a common vision for good digital practice, outlining seven success measures for digital transformation. Our team has been conducting discovery research and co-development sessions to inform, draft and iterate the guidance. We’ve also been helping leaders to prioritise actions for their team’s improvement.

As part of this work, we developed three support offer prototypes to help leaders prioritise actions for their team’s improvement. One prototype was prioritised and is currently undergoing development as a minimum viable product. The aim of the support offer is to make it easier for NHS executives to stay up-to-date with the latest digital reports, policies, papers and trends, with succinct content that can be consumed on the go. This includes blueprints, standards and real-life examples of best practice, offering a simple way for leaders to learn about digital health.

The ultimate goal is to ensure that NHS leaders have the right information, tools and support to digitally transform services and provide better care. Beyond the NHS, the support offer has the potential to enable digital transformation across the wider public sector.

What Good Looks Like for Nursing

Building on the What Good Looks Like (WGLL) programme that our Helix Centre is supporting, the team is also working with NHSX on their WGLL for Digitally Enabled Nursing programme. This initiative recognises the fact that nurses are critically positioned to drive digitally-enabled care transformation. Organisations that create the conditions for nurses to influence digital transformation decisions from ward to board will be better placed to have a culture of safer, more effective, efficient, and sustainable care.

Our discovery work aims to inform a co-designed framework of what good looks like for digital nursing, in addition to a self-assessment process to track progress and pinpoint support. It will also guide the development of a support offering, which aligns with the strategy to engage executive-level nurse leaders on how to make a positive impact on the areas of greatest need for the nursing workforce.

Once completed in 2022, the framework and self-assessment guide will offer recommendations for digitally-enabled nursing for executive-level nurse leaders across integrated care systems and provider organisations.

Centring new technologies around people’s needs

New technologies have the potential to increase patient safety if they are centred around the needs of both patients and staff. While technology has increased many aspects of patient safety, medication safety has long been neglected. Many clinicians report that they do not receive enough support when prescribing and giving drugs, especially in high pressure environments such as paediatric A&E.

Helix has worked with Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust to understand the human and technical aspects of giving drugs to children. This research resulted in the development of a computerised decision support system designed to help doctors and nurses prepare and administer drugs safely under duress. The software determines the safe dosing parameters for any given drug and a suitable method of administration for that individual patient by referencing a pharmacological database. A personalised syringe label is printed, on- demand, that graphically illustrates the safe preparation and administration instructions for the medication. This is supported by on-screen instructions to guide clinicians through the process.

The system, now called Dosium, has successfully spun out from the Helix Centre. The Dosium team are continuing the partnership with Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and bringing the benefits of digitally enabling prescribing to reality.