NUH shortlisted for prestigious digital innovation awards | Latest news

Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust (NUH) has been shortlisted for two prestigious digital innovation awards for improving patient care and freeing up hospital beds for those that need them most.

The annual HSJ Digital Awards celebrate the power of NHS digital projects, services and teams to transform care delivery, enhance efficiency, and improve patient outcomes.

NUH has been shortlisted in two categories:

• Connecting Health and Social Care Through Digital: One Version of the Truth – a collaboration between NUH and the health and social care system to speed up discharges.

and

• Reducing Health Inequalities Through Digital: Paediatric Family Activation Rapid Response (FARR ä ) App – pioneered by NUH and the University of Leicester – an accessible, multilingual, real-time app that allows parents and carers to raise concerns to clinicians.

 

The One Version of the Truth project was a collaboration between NUH and the Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Integrated Care System (ICS), to reduce the number of medically safe patients waiting more than a day to be discharged.

Dr Mark Simmonds, NUH Deputy Medical Director, Consultant, Acute and Critical Care Medicine, said: “Our experiences show that the issue of discharge delays – a seemingly intractable problem that the NHS has struggled with for years – is solvable. When you’ve got data you can trust, great things are possible. Five years ago, bed-day losses were costing NUH around £20m a year. Now, thanks to trusted, real-time data – and incredible collaboration across our ICS – we’ve halved those costs and have the latitude to go further.”

Discharge delays are now trending downwards: at midnight on 29 September 2024, there were 109 discharge-ready patients stuck in NUH beds – down more than 60% on the 285 figure two years earlier.  The average post-medically safe length of stay has also reduced by over three days since 2017 and these improvements have continued to support care in the most recent winter, protecting planned surgery and easing the pressure on the Emergency Department and other emergency pathways.

One Version of the Truth used a live, patient-flow dashboard powered by Nervecentre to group discharge-ready patients according to their pathway, such as home or care facility, and responsibility for their progress was assigned to an individual.

Kay Parker, NUH Integrated Discharge Lead, said: “Everyone – from the Executive Board down to teams on the ground – has a real-time picture of what’s happening and why. At the click of a button, we can see what the hold-ups are, who’s accountable, and what we need to do to move things forward. This has transformed our culture and our work.”

“This live, reliable data helps us identify issues and work collaboratively to drive improvements,” said Lisa Marshall, ICS Integrated Discharge Lead. “This has allowed us to shape community services to support the flow of patients out of hospital. The data has broken down barriers and enabled us to blend services – to have health and social care working together, offering care packages together. Rather than it being about ‘them and us’, the focus is right where it should be: it's all about the patient.”

The initiative meant NUH gained the equivalent of two full wards' worth of space by speeding up patient discharges; the average number of Medically Safe for Transfer (MSFT) patients has reduced from 200 to 150.  

Dr Simmonds added: “I am so pleased for the many staff who have been on this digital journey to be recognised by the HSJ Digital Awards. Discharge has gone from being managed on paper, Post-it notes, and whiteboards to being a highly efficient, visible, and measurable process, which it deserves to be. We look forward to the results!”

Meanwhile, the FARR ä app has been co-designed after extensive research and consultations to ensure it meets the needs of diverse families. An eight-week pilot study will launch next month on D33, a medical ward in Nottingham Children’s Hospital, to establish the feasibility of implementing the app via user engagement, response times, and user satisfaction.

Language obstacles, cultural misunderstandings, and lack of familiarity with the NHS can result in poorer outcomes for patients for whom English is not their first language. The app – which will evolve to include more languages and other accessibility features – aims to address health disparities by bridging the communications gap between NHS staff and parents and carers, and promoting shared decision-making around a child’s care. 

Nicola Taylor, co-lead on the FARR project and Nursing Lead, said: "The FARR app acts as a safety net for parents and carers if their concerns are not being addressed promptly as it enables parents to escalate their concerns directly to the Paediatric Critical Care Outreach Team (PCCOT). This ties into Martha's Rule, an NHS patient safety initiative to ensure the vitally important concerns of the patient and those who know them best are listened to and acted upon."

Rachel Boardman, Divisional Nurse in Family Health, and Joseph Manning MBE, Professor of Nursing and Child Health, said: “We are constantly striving to improve the safety, quality and inclusivity of services for the children and their families through research and innovation. The FARR ä app – which has been co-designed with our communities – is a fantastic example of this.

“It has gained significant national and international interest as an innovation that has potential of significant impact across different organisations and health systems.  We are delighted that this work has been recognised in the shortlist, and are so proud of Nicola Taylor and Dr Takawira Marufu - clinical academic nursing research leads- and the wider teams for this amazing work.