Working with Accelerator companies to improve patient outcomes

Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust is working with five DigitalHealth.London Accelerator companies from the 2016/17 cohort to improve service delivery and patient outcomes. Here, Dr Lawrence Petalidis, Head of Innovation and Impact at CW+ and one of the Navigators for the Accelerator, explains the projects and how they support the trust’s digital health innovation and quality improvement strategy.

CW+, the charity for the trust and a founding partner of DigitalHealth.London’s Accelerator programme, has this year played an instrumental role in securing five collaborations with companies from the 2016/17 Accelerator cohort, which are working to support the trust’s digital health innovation and service improvement strategy. Key components of this success were ChelWest’s medical and nursing leadership and over 45 clinical staff across both trust sites.

“The Accelerator has been a key component of our innovation and quality improvement portfolio this year,” said Zoe Penn, Medical Director at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, “We have worked with our charity CW+ to secure some high quality, transformative and patient-centric digital health projects, engaging with over 45 staff across both our hospitals. I shall be looking forward to a second even more successful year.”

Working with Accelerator companies, the trust has adopted five innovative solutions in the space of less than one year:

  1. The first UK pilot for stoma patient digital health: A group of nine colorectal surgeons and specialist stoma nurses will lead a trial of a device called the ostom-I. This sensor, created by 11Health, enables clinical teams to monitor stoma discharge. discharge for patients and their clinical teams. With some 102,000 stoma patients in the UK alone, the pilot aims to inform a wider randomised clinical trial assessing impact of the device on quality of life and clinical outcomes. The Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) funded pilot includes Imperial College and New Bucks University expertise and will recruit patients from West Middlesex, Chelsea and St Mary’s.
  2. Digitising ward auditing and accreditation: A one-year CW+ funded collaboration aiming to digitise ward quality inspections across forty wards and specialist departments across the Trust’s two hospital sites. Working directly with the senior nursing team, Accelerator company PerfectWard will aim to demonstrate increased efficiency and transition to a fully paperless process, with an estimated six hours of senior nursing time saved from each ward audit.
  3. Physiotherapy remote guidance: The Chelsea and Westminster Hospital musculoskeletal physiotherapy team are working with Physitrack to deliver remote, video guidance to its patients, replacing the existing paper-based guidance. CW+ are funding five licenses for the team.
  4. Remote monitoring of heart failure patients: West Middlesex University Hospital’s cardiology team is working to transform heart failure patient care across settings of care. Part of the one year pilot led by Sadia Khan is a CW+ funded initiative enabling remote patient monitoring following discharge. Wirelessly linking to devices and wearables, but also enabling direct patient feedback, a mobile app will allow clinical teams to monitor heart failure patients who are not in hospital, and detect deterioration earlier. One of the goals of the wider project is to reduce non elective heart failure admissions by 15% liberating an estimated 70 beds a month.
  5. Improving Post-natal ward patient experience and system efficiency: ChelWest has selected Accelerator company Lumeon for the digitisation of its post-natal discharge process. The two-year project funded by CW+ will aim to lower mean discharge waiting times to under two hours, freeing up an estimated 1,000 bed days a year.