The IT digital automation team at The Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust (PAHT) have received a Network Designs Limited (NDL) Community Award 2023 and generous charitable donation in recognition of their commitment to enhance patient care and experiences.
NDL are a software and services company who support public sector organisations to uplift, transform and expand technical services through robotic process automation, mobile Apps, electronic forms, workflows and interconnectivity of systems.
The NDL Community Awards are an opportunity to celebrate and recognise the efforts in providing high-quality services for the general public and advances in technology over the last year.
The team were nominated for their project which focused on streamlining patient referrals, from their GP to attending their first hospital appointment, to ensure that their experience was as straightforward as possible.
Marcel Horst, digital automation programme manager at PAHT, said: “We’re delighted to have received the Driving Value Silver Award.
“This was achieved through the introduction of robotic process automation and electronic forms. Initially, our teams would manually process over 2,300 referral forms every month, taking around five minutes to process and the information is available to clinicians almost instantly.
“The introduction of robotic process automation means that each patient referral now takes seconds to upload.
“This has allowed us to release time back to our clinicians so that they can continue to focus on patient care, further reduce the risk of data breaches, improve the quality of our data, and ultimately improve care and experiences for our patients.
“As part of our award win, we received £250 to donate to a charity of our choice. As a team, we decided to donate the funds to our hospital charity, The Princess Alexandra Hospital Charity, which aims to enhance patient care, purchase special equipment, improve facilities and invest in vital research that supports patients now and into the future.”
Phil Holland, chief information officer at PAHT, said: “The team work exceptionally hard behind the scenes to ensure that changes to the way we work are seamless and effective. I’m so proud to see them recognised for their hard work and dedication.
“We’re on a journey to improve automation within the NHS, helping our clinical teams to spend more time with their patients by reducing the amount of time they spend completing paperwork.
“Not only has the project delivered significant time and resource savings, it has paved the way for a sustainable governance framework.
“Automated processes play an important role in the care and experiences we provide to our patients and we are committed to building upon this success and future projects.”