SBRI Healthcare are pleased to announce six companies that will receive further NHS England funding to develop innovations that aim to improve operational efficiency in acute care through the management of patient flow. Sharing £2.6 million, the successful companies are developing technologies and service improvements that enable patients to progress more efficiently through acute care, including in their diagnostics, therapy and discharge.
With the winter approaching, Acute Trusts are again facing significant challenges due to the high volume of patients using hospital services. Improving the flow of patients, information and resources is crucial for driving up service quality and productivity, and improving patient experience.
With individual awards of between £300K and £800K, the innovations in development include:
- a novel digital system currently in operation at University College London Hospitals (UCLH) to streamline handover of patients being discharged from the Trust’s stroke unit making a crucial link between the patient record and real-time information;
- a new biopsy triaging system to improve the speed and efficiency of colorectal cancer diagnosis as part of a national screening programme;
- a mobile capacity management software that links the patient’s status with availability and allocation of beds, and prioritisation of clinical and non-clinical staff.
Shirlene Oh, Director of Commerce, Innovation and Capability Development at Imperial College Health Partners and Management Board Director for SBRI Healthcare, commented: “We are pleased to be able to offer this second phase of SBRI Healthcare funding to develop technologies that will increase hospital efficiency whilst crucially improving the experience and outcomes for patients. The six successful companies are developing exciting approaches that support the NHS in driving up productivity through for example; the streamlining of patient handover; better capacity management; and faster, more efficient screening and diagnosis.”
The six companies selected by SBRI Healthcare for the second tranche of investment were drawn from a shortlist of eight companies that received six months feasibility funding in January 2017. The successful companies demonstrated best value and greatest technical feasibility to a panel of experts looking for game-changing technologies with the highest potential value to patients and the health service. The companies will be supported and fully funded to continue with product development and testing.
The companies (and supporting Academic Health Science Network) are:
- Hospital Discharge Efficiency
- Care Sourcer Ltd (Scotland)Care Sourcer will facilitate the hospital to home care process with a real-time, web-based platform. Professionals, patients and their families will be able to detail individual needs and be provided appropriate support through sourcing local care provision. A unique platform which empowers care seekers to work in partnership with healthcare professionals to define how they would like their care to be delivered, Care Sourcer will support improved patient flow from hospital to community and residential care provision, reducing hospital delayed discharge.
- Hospital In-Patient Journey
- Idox Health Ltd (Eastern AHSN)Establishing StrokeNet, a secure, N3 network-contained, browser-accessed, digital platform that enables real-time exchange of clinical information critical to managing, at each site, bed availability and other relevant clinical resource pending patient exchange. Provided as an automatic add-on to a comprehensive digital patient record for stroke, StrokePad, currently in operation at University College London Hospitals (UCLH), the system will be equally usable as a stand-alone, providing locally the standard functionality of a ‘handover system’ but crucially linked in real-time to receiving and transmitting unit
- Hospital Resource Usage
- BeamLine Diagnostics Ltd (Oxford AHSN)The national screening programme for colorectal adenocarcinoma generates millions of resected polyps that must be sent off for complex histopathological testing. Up to 99% of these are benign (hyperplastic) and the burden on pathology causes delays in return of results of up to eight weeks. A ‘resect and discard’ protocol for small hyperplastic polyps would streamline the diagnostic process, saving significant time, money and resources. A low-cost, fast and accurate biopsy triaging system has been developed to identify healthy samples and eliminate them from pathology. The project will determine whether it can be applied to colonic polyp screening.
- Highland Biosciences Ltd (Scotland)Demonstrating that delivering near patient coagulopathy diagnostics into acute care will improve efficiency of use of resources within the hospital. The project will gather stakeholder evidence to ensure the design and usage prototcol for the CoaguScan device will reduce variation in results due to blood sampling.
- Nervecentre Software Ltd (Oxford AHSN)Traditional bed management focuses on efficient allocation of beds, but in hospitals that are typically over 95% full, current methods provide little benefit. Nervecentre Software’s approach focuses upon use of mobile software to achieve regular, accurate capture of patient status, and efficient allocation and prioritisation of work for staff. The proposal combines lean thinking, patient centric pathways, and right clinician, right place, tight time concepts; translating this understanding into capacity management.