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Worcestershire Healthcare NHS Trust
Mobile healthcare technology
About Worcestershire Healthcare NHS Trust
Worcestershire Healthcare NHS Trust provides day-to-day community healthcare and mental health services to more than 545,000 people in the local community. Worcestershire provides a range of services, which include in-patient, out-patient and day services, community nursing and therapies.
It also provides a number of specialist clinics such as community dentistry, sexual health and services for children. Additionally, the Trust manages the entire Herefordshire and Worcestershire Breast Screening Service.
These services are delivered from over 70 sites across the Trust, as well as in GP surgeries and in people's own homes. These sites include five key community hospitals, in Bromsgrove, Evesham, Malvern, Pershore, and Tenbury. At present, the main in-patient facilities for mental health patients are in Bromsgrove, Worcester, Redditch and Kidderminster.
The Trust has been using i.Patient Manager since 1994 at workstations around the Trust and now has over 1,000 users covering all community and mental health service areas.
The i.Patient Manager system provides a highly intelligent store for totally integrated information across all care settings with the flexibility and functional breadth to extend beyond traditional care boundaries to support acute care, community care, mental health, child health, aged care and social services. Integrated information access supports all those healthcare professionals involved in care delivery with the same accurate, timely information to enhance performance and improve communications.
What is General Packet Radio Service (GPRS)?
GPRS potentially is an ideal system for requesting and delivering the information necessary for a mobile community healthcare worker to do their job. GPRS is a system of transferring information over GSM mobile phone networks in small packets. e.g. an email would be broken down into lots of little packets of information and then sent over the network. Each packet is given an extra bit of information that tells the network where it is meant to be going and how it fits into the overall structure of the original email. This means that the packets can be routed via different parts of the network taking advantage of spare capacity and re-assembled at the destination in the right order.
GPRS is encrypted end to end and, as no data is actually downloaded onto the device, security is maximised. GPRS has the capability to give users ‘always-on’ access to email, the Internet and links directly to the Trust network services from wherever they are working.
Going wireless
Late in 2001, Worcestershire Healthcare NHS Trust, as part of its continuous drive to improve the level of care and service to the local community, embarked on a project to enable its mobile nursing and therapy staff to provide truly mobile healthcare which supports access to patient information through wireless technology.
By empowering its community staff via GPRS enabled notebooks to access, download and update patient records whilst on location at clinics or schools, for example, Worcester Healthcare NHS Trust would facilitate effective delivery of healthcare in the community.
At the core of the NHS strategy, “Information for Health” published by the Department of Health in November 1998, is the idea of an Electronic Health Record, which should be securely accessible from any place or at any time. The introduction of true mobile healthcare informatics is a significant step towards achieving this goal.
The pilot
The six month pilot study, which began in January 2002, initially involved staff within teams across intermediate care, hospital at home primary care and mental health.
The first phase of the pilot focused on the assessment of data transmission rates and service reliability. It also involved the evaluation of different mobile devices. Worcestershire was supported throughout the pilot by iSOFT and BT Health, who provided the technical expertise in the pilot study to assess the potential of GPRS technology within the region.
Benefits – a real example
Paediatric Speech and Language Therapists typically spend a lot of time working in special needs schools. As a result of the integration of GPRS in i.Patient Manager, it is now possible for them to access electronic patient records, email and the Internet to get the most up-to-date clinical information quickly, without having to return to the office for up-to-date information. This ultimately means a better service for the patients and the community.
Recently a speech therapist made a request to the Trust Librarian for further information on particular speech problems associated with the Urdu language. Details of relevant web sites were emailed to the Therapist who was able to conduct interactive session with the family, via the GPRS connection.
“For those who cannot gain access to the Trust network services GPRS provides an ideal solution,”
Ian McGregor
Worcestershire Healthcare NHS Trust
The wireless future of Worcestershire
The pilot has already been extended indefinitely and has now been live for over a year resulting in important changes in working practices.
One of the key issues under scrutiny during pilot has been security.
However, as GPRS is encrypted end to end and, as no data is actually downloaded onto the device, security is well protected and maximised.
Beyond the pilot, Worcestershire NHS would like to extend GPRS to other peripatetic staff who would benefit from remote access. There are approximately 20 staff currently using the GPRS notebooks and dependent on financial backing, plans are being prepared to roll this out across the Trust beyond the pilot.
The project may also be used as a template for other NHS Trusts across the UK, who are looking at ways to improve connectivity for their workforce and deliver better services to the local community.
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