Babblevoice: Demonstrating the importance and impact of equitable digital telephony solutions

DigitalHealth.London Accelerator alumnus company, babblevoice, share their journey in implementing digital change within health and care, why it is so important and the impact they have made in their journey thus far.

In the UK, Primary Care Practices and their service users often struggle with outdated, legacy technology. Their limited capabilities mean that as demand for healthcare services rises and waiting times increase, the pressure on the health and care industry grows. As laid out in the NHS Long Term Plan, embracing digital transformation is the answer to solving these issues. By empowering healthcare providers to streamline their operations, we can automate routine tasks, alleviate waiting times, and ultimately contribute to better health outcomes for patients.

One company leading this digital change is babblevoice, a purpose-built and award-winning telephony system meticulously designed to assist both practice patients and staff. It offers functionality tailored to the needs of healthcare providers and efficient integration with clinical software. By facilitating the digitalisation of existing practices, babblevoice enhances patient access and satisfaction, significantly reduces costs, and automates routine administrative tasks.

Importance

In Primary Care Surgeries, the seamless operation of telephone systems is essential. Even a brief interruption in service increases the pressure and stress for both patients and staff alike. Currently, babblevoice’s telephony system boasts an impressive 99.9% reliability rate, translating to a downtime of no more than 52.56 minutes annually.

They are currently working towards a 100% reliability rate to remove any potential downtime, ensuring it is no longer a problem for users via:

Amazon Web Services (AWS) Collaboration

• As the leading provider of scalable server networks, AWS has significant experience in running stable cloud infrastructure. Babblevoice’s partnership with AWS means that they will be able to use their technology in a way that offers instant ‘elastic’ capacity changes, ensuring that the software can meet surgery demands (e.g., automatically switching multiple servers on or off during peak times). This allows babblevoice to continue delivering a highly reliable and responsive phone connection while minimising energy use.

The New Babblevoice

• The babblevoice development team is currently working on a new voice communication software, which will replace the existing system. By building and designing this innovative technology in-house, babblevoice can precisely adapt it to meet the unique demands and challenges of Primary Care Surgeries. This approach ensures improved connectivity and enhanced stability, promising a more dependable and tailored solution for healthcare providers.

Nick Knight, Technical Director at babblevoice, said: “It’s been an empowering experience to be able to identify an area for improvement, work up a robust set of solutions, and design and implement them. The outcome will be a significant improvement on reliability for our surgeries.”

Impact

At Brunel Medical Practice, babblevoice has been a welcome addition for all 16,500 patients within the Torbay and Torquay area, as well as for staff working across Brunel’s 12 surgeries. The system’s adaptability and flexibility mean that it was easily customised to suit the needs of the area’s patient population, many of whom are aged over 65 with chronic health problems, and are housebound or care home residents. Some of these custom features include:

Integrated EMIS pop-up

• As soon as a General Practitioner (GP) and patient are connected, their EMIS record pops up. This allows GPs to instantly see if the patient is part of Brunel’s care home visiting service (a collaboration across three Primary Care Networks). The GP can then identify which of Brunel’s surgeries is allocated to their care home and either handle the call or pass it to the correct team. This has saved GPs an average of 4 hours per day as compared to Brunel’s old telephony system.

Priority call lists

• At Brunel, a patient’s palliative care needs take the highest priority. When a patient falling into this category contacts the surgery, staff can promptly identify their elevated priority status and respond accordingly.

Queue call-back

• When patients contact the surgery, they are now informed of their position in the queue and have the option to request a callback. This system is both swift and user-friendly for them, providing reassurance that they will be able to speak with staff shortly, without the need to remain on hold. On a daily basis, at least 40 patients make use of this feature, and it has garnered highly positive feedback.

Rachael Lankshear, Practice Manager at Brunel Medical Practice, said: “Babblevoice is such a great cloud based telephony system for primary care surgeries, I’m often spreading the word to my colleagues at other practices. You simply cannot overstate the impact on patients and practice staff of a surgery phone system that works brilliantly. It’s so important to get right.”

To find out more about babblevoice, check out “Striving for 100% Uptime: The Critical Nature of Surgery Telephone Reliability” and “Babblevoice Customer Stories: Brunel Medical Practice“.

Babblevoice is an alumnus of the DigitalHealth.London Accelerator Programme.

The DigitalHealth.London Accelerator is a collaborative programme funded by the UK Government through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, the Health Innovation Network South London, the Office of Life Sciences, CW+, the Mayor of London and the Levelling Up Fund.