Lisa Taylor
Hannah Mountford
14 July 2017
The national NHS Scotland Event took place on the 20th-21st June in Glasgow. This is the foremost healthcare event in Scotland is now in its twelfth year, and continues to aim to promote best practice and innovation.
The theme for this year’s event was “Working Differently Across Boundaries: Transforming Health and Social Care” focussing on the development of services to meet the increasing demands of an aging population whilst improving patient experiences and satisfaction.
Innovation is key, and NHS Scotland’s continuing implementation of its TEC strategy is highly important to this. Flo continues to be a sustainable innovation now adopted by two thirds of Scottish Health Boards, evident by the number of our Simple Telehealth Community Members selected to showcase their outcomes delivered via a combination of existing adoption of evidence based practice and new innovative approaches
NHS Tayside
Sally Wilson, (Locality Integration Improvement Manager) and Shona Burge, (Home Mobile Health Monitoring Development Manager) described how they have led the way bringing Flo to NHS Tayside supporting people with long term conditions to better self-manage their health. Although it’s early days in terms of the implementation of Flo, feedback from patients so far has been promising:
“ The service has altered my life, I feel supported… it’s great ”
“ I now feel that I am not on my own ”
“ I was astonished at how ‘Flo’ Changed my medication habits ”
Jacqueline Walker,Nutrition Managed Clinical Network Manager and her colleagues, described the development of NHS Lothian’s new Oral Nutritional Support Pathway (ONS) supported by Flo for personal health support and home monitoring. Flo’s integration is brand new to the pathway however, the team has a long term view with expected outcomes by 2020 that will focus on creating co-produced pathways to improve diagnosis, treatment and review of ONS.
NHS Lothian
Meanwhile, Mary Paterson, (e-Health Research Group, Centre for Population Health Sciences), Brian McKinstry, (e-Health Research Group, Centre for Population Health Sciences), Grahame Cumming (Innovation Lead), and Elizabeth Payne (Telehealth Lead -Home Monitoring) from NHS Lothian presented on how they have been using Flo to help patients to self-manage their blood pressure at home. The poster describes positive results, receiving great feedback from patients and healthcare professionals alike. Patients feel that using Flo is convenient, while staff appreciate having access to reliable home readings to inform treatment decisions earlier. A significant reduction in the number of appointments has been demonstrated, creating capacity in primary care.
Parallel Session: Delivering Care in the Digital Age – Embracing Technology and Data Intelligence to Transform Health and Social Care
In addition to those who shared their posters, two further members of the Simple Telehealth Community took part in a parallel session held on both days of the event. Michelle Brogan (Service Development Manager) described the impact demonstrated by Home and Mobile Health Monitoring (HMHM) and the potential benefits.
NHS Lanarkshire’s Morag Hearty (TEC Programme Manager) shared her experience of implementing TEC solutions, namely Flo, at a local level. Morag discussed both the enablers and challenges that had arisen during implementation, as well as an overview of the outcomes from NHS Lanarkshire’s BP Monitoring Early Rapid Improvement Study, in summary:
- NHS Lanarkshire now have over 40% of their practices active
- 3,868 clinical contacts have been avoided
- Average cost per patient of £6.72
- 100% of GPs asked (n=104) agreed that their patient being supported via Flo to manage their blood pressure at home helped their clinical decision-making
- 99% of patients found Flo easy to use
Morag also shared some of her top implementation tips with the audience, including:
- Listening to the staff and patients alike, taking their views in to account
- Keep it simple to start with – look for a quick win to help convince people that what you want to implement really does work
- Be creative and communicative
Morag also used this opportunity to promote Fraser – a figure who is well known to the Simple Community! Have you #FoundFraser yet?
#FoundFraser
Views & Downloads (Membership required):
NHS Scotland Event Florence comes to TaysideNHS Scotland Event Parallel Session B2-C2
NHS Scotland Event posters ONS NHS Tayside
NHS Scotland event posters Scale-up BP NHS Lothian
