Stephanie Lurshay
Critical Care and Digital Innovation Pharmacist
Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Trust
2020 Bio: Stephanie’s current role allows her to pursue her passion for digital transformation and remain on the forefront of providing patient care. She has a strong background in Electronic Prescriptions and Medicines Administration (EPMA) and has been involved in development projects with the digital pharmacy team and wider trust. She recently led a project to develop an electronic medicine ordering process to aid ordering from critical care wards during the COVID-19 pandemic.
After graduating from Portsmouth University with First Class Honours, she began her career with the Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Trust (RBHT) Foundation Pharmacist Rotational Program. This provided an invaluable platform from which to develop her clinical expertise; to refine this she has recently completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Clinical Pharmacy Practice.
Stephanie has a keen interest for digital development, and to enhance her knowledge she has completed a short course – AI in Healthcare: Equipping the Workforce for Digital Transformation.
Digital Pioneer Fellowship project summary: The Trust uses two EPMA systems, one for critical care and a second for general ward areas. When patients move between these settings, the prescriber must manually transcribe the prescriptions from one EPMA system to the other. The transcribing process is known to be time consuming and prone to errors, and therefore is a risk to patient safety.
The project aims to use Robotic Process Automation (RPA) technology to assist in the transcribing process, with the target of reducing the overall error rate and time taken to transcribe.
RPA is technology designed to mimic the processes that a human would perform on a computer. It can be used to reduce the administrative burden associated with performing repetitive, well-defined, and replicable tasks. The trust is not aware of any RPA technology being used to replicate a clinical process in this way, and the project may be the first of this type.
Estimated number of patients / staff impacted by the project: This project will affect all adult patients who move from critical care areas to the general ward. The project is being conducted at both hospitals in the Trust and it will affect all prescribers and pharmacists involved in the transcription and checking process.
Goal(s) for the programme: The project will improve patient safety and reduce the time taken for prescribers to transcribe medicines between drug charts. It will also look to improve general prescribing ‘good practice’. Further to this, there will be a reduction in time required by the pharmacist resolving transcription errors.