Barbara Arroyo
Deputy Chief Clinical Information Officer and Consultant Psychiatrist
South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust
2020 Bio: Barbara has worked in mental health services for twenty years and took her first consultant job in general adult psychiatry in the community in 2011. She has always been interested in the early adoption of digital tools in clinical practice to improve communication, collaboration and to develop high quality, safe systems in health and social care, to help improve clinical outcomes.
In January 2020, she was appointed deputy Chief Clinical Information Officer at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation NHS Trust. She supports the engagement of staff, service users, carers in digital transformation and digital inclusion, in partnership with digital services, clinical information systems and digital clinical peers.
Watch a video about Barbara’s project here.
Digital Pioneer Fellowship project summary: ‘Beth’ is a new way for service users, carers and their care teams to securely communicate and collaborate online at SLaM. ‘Beth’ enhances continuity of service delivery during the COVID-19 pandemic and supports the strategy to stay connected and co-ordinate care online. Beth supports service user, carer and staff experience and promotes patient safety.
‘Beth’ aims to positively impact:
– the delivery of care, ensuring continuity of care during and after the COVID-19 pandemic to improve patient, carer and staff experience
– access to parts of personal health records, like individualised care plans, to increase patient safety
– new ways to communicate and collaborate for patients, carers and their care teams to improve engagement
– 24/7 access to health resources to promote self-management, choice and autonomy between episodes of care
– a blended approach to the experience of care, based on need and preference, that would improve patient rated outcomes
– access to healthcare and promote a healthier population
– and raise awareness about resilience and trusted online resources, free and available to all
– the co-production and development of new useful features in ‘Beth’.
Estimated number of patients / staff impacted by the project: ‘Beth’ is currently available to all adult and older adult mental health services in SLaM. They are approaching 10 community teams per borough, including core mental health, psychology and psychotherapy and national services, to reach out to 500 services users and cares in the next year. They estimate that when 500 patients and carers sign up to their ‘Beth’ account, ‘Beth’ will be embedded and become business as usual in their offer to provide and for people to receive mental health care.
Goal(s) for the programme: To increase the number of new users to ‘Beth’, for patients, carers and staff in SLaM.
To improve patient safety by better engagement in care planning.
To improve experience of care by having access to a user friendly online platform.
To contribute to the development of new features.