Digital Technology

Digital technology and innovation can help us to transform the way we provide health and care and offer new ways to support people to stay well.

two people looking at an image on a computer monitor

Embedding Digital

An integral part of our clinical, business and population health strategies is to embed digital transformation. We are:

Using digital to improve the way services are designed, delivered and managed in an integrated way, with a clear focus on the individual and their experience, and where health and care professionals can make the best decisions because they have the information they need at the point of care when they need it.

Optimising the value of data to create intelligence to be used routinely to improve patient safety, deliver better health outcomes and tackle inequalities.

Nurturing a thriving digital health and care ecosystem, supporting research and innovation, developing skills and capabilities and recognised internationally as an exemplar of innovation and digitisation.

Working in Digital Partnership

Partnerships are crucial to our digital transformation. Digital strategy at an ICS level must complement and support place-based digital strategies and the strategies of our partner organisations. As well as helping those partner organisations align with and implement national strategies. We will find digital solutions that span our ICS partnerships that foster collaboration, support investment, ensure economies of scale and reduce duplication. We will also develop solutions within our partnerships which promote best practice through partnership working and provide resources where it doesn’t make sense to fund in-house.

Our Priorities

Our strategic priorities for digital build on our Digital Fast Forward Plan and positioned within the Digital Health & Wellbeing Charter for Yorkshire and Humber.

Working collaboratively with our partner organisations, we have identified our strategic priority areas, organised against the NHS What Good Looks Like themes.

Click here to view our Digital Strategy.

Our Projects

Digital Primary Care Innovation Hub:

Yorkshire & Humber AHSN has been working in partnership with the Humber and North Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership and NHS England Digital Primary Care North East and Yorkshire to help establish an Innovation Hub with the aim to accelerate the uptake of digital solutions within primary care, including pharmacy, optometry and dentistry specialities.

The Innovation Hub will provide the opportunity to identify and support clinical and non-clinical unmet needs aligned to Humber and North Yorkshire Integrated Care Board primary care strategic priorities. By creating a managed and prioritised repository of unmet needs, that can be solved through innovation, the Hub will ensure that patients will benefit from cutting edge solutions.

Take a look at the Humber and North Yorkshire Digital Primary Care Innovation Hub website

Digital Inclusion:

Help to use the internet in Humber & North Yorkshire

The map below shows where there is free access to internet; access to devices, and digital skills support sessions or courses are available across the region.

Please let us know if you have a support offer to add to the map by emailing to: digitalinclusionHNY@gmail.com

Entries in the map are listed in four categories:

· Places that have computers with internet access

· Support with using the internet

· Course to learn to use or improve your digital skills

· Libraries – most libraries have free to use computers with internet access; free Wi-Fi and someone who can help people to use them and to get online; some also have computer courses.

o East Riding libraries also have mobile libraries that offer free Wi-Fi. You can find more information about these here https://www.eastridinglibraries.co.uk/find-a-library/

You will find more information about each by clicking on the icons on the map, and more information about digital support available in the region here.

Principles

The NHS and the wider health and care system, is committed to delivering information and services digitally wherever appropriate.

For patients, digital health can mean better access to information and care, increased convenience, and more opportunities for greater control of their own health and shared care. For the health and care system digital health can mean more effective delivery of care, better outcomes and reduced costs. However National statistics show that many of the people who could most benefit from digital services are the least likely to be online.

The ‘Digital Inclusion Principles’ developed by the HCV Digital Inclusion Group are intended to be used as consistent guide and aid all HCV organisations when developing projects which may have a digital element. The principles are based on existing good practice (e.g. NHS Digital guidelines).

Find out more via our Digital Inclusion Strategy document.

ORCHA

Health and care apps can be used to help manage and recover from a huge range of mental and physical health issues, but there are hundreds of thousands of health apps out there, and not all of them are safe.

To help you find secure health apps, NHS Humber and North Yorkshire Integrated Care Board (ICB) has built a Health App Library where you can find apps to help you manage your health. Click here to access the Library.

The ICB also has access to a Digital Health Formulary, which health and care professionals can use to send health apps securely via email or text message. Your health or care professional may send you a health app if they feel it would be beneficial to you.

All of the apps in both platforms have been assessed by the Organisation for the Review of Care and Health Apps (ORCHA) against 350+ safety criteria. ORCHA checks each app to make sure it gives safe health advice, manages your private data safely and is easy to use.

Primary Care

The increase of online and video consultations and improved text messaging functionality have improved patient access to primary care services across the region and helped clinicians manage demands on their time.

All Humber and North Yorkshire GP practices now offer online and video consultations and have access to text messaging systems. Over £2 million investment during 2021/22 supported a comprehensive upgrade of IT infrastructure and devices for primary care staff and clinical systems to support GPs and their practices.

Digital Journey Planner (DJP)

The Digital Journey Planner (DJP) is a practice ‘diagnostic and improvement’ web tool that helps GP practices baseline their current level of digital maturity and understand the path to improvement.

Created alongside NHS England’s Digital First Primary Care team, Humber and North Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership commissioned Redmoor Health to support its practices using the enhanced subscription. The support encompasses a wrap-around approach delivered via one-to-one calls, workshops with practices and Primary Care Networks (PCNs), and topic-specific webinars to underpin the DJP and provide users with a depth of understanding.

Click here to read the full case study.

Yorkshire & Humber Care Record (YHCR)

Uptake and adoption for the shared care record solution across our region continues to increase thanks to the and support from the YHCR Interweave Team.

We have more GP practices than ever using the portal to access vital patient information to support care. Humber Teaching NHS Foundation Trust, York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust have also adopted the YHCR as well as three local authorities – East Riding of Yorkshire Council, Hull City Council and North Yorkshire County Council.

The YHCR supports the automation of transfer of care documentation from Yorkshire Ambulance Service (YAS) into four A&E departments across the region to save staff time, increase efficiencies and improve patient care. Across the partnership we have connected Shared Care Record data with our acute and mental health trusts and three of our local authorities. GP Connect information is now linked in and we are currently deploying a new version of the browser into each GP practice.

This success is down to a shared vision for the region, securing funding and ensuring a team that could fulfil the ambitious timeline.

Elective (Planned) Care:

Virtual Wards:

Elective care covers a broad range of non-urgent services from diagnostic tests and scans to outpatient care, surgery and cancer treatment.

The Covid-19 pandemic had a significant impact on the delivery of elective care, meaning some patients are waiting longer for treatment than they were before the pandemic began. In line with national drivers, digital is key to support the recovery and transformation of the way we deliver this planned care across our region.

Following the success of virtual wards during Covid-19 a full Virtual Ward governance framework has been put in place to oversee the wider expansion across the partnership.

Our ambition is for the roll-out of virtual wards across the partnership and that by December 2023 the system can simultaneously manage between 680 and 850 beds.

There are currently five virtual ward projects being run across our partnership which include:

Long Term Condition COPD
Paediatrics
Frailty
Care home remote monitoring

Care professionals working on the above projects have direct access to data from the home setting and can remotely monitor their patients, as well deliver care via remote methods. The use of virtual wards means more hospital beds are available for those needing inpatient care. We anticipate these projects be extended throughout 2022/23, plus the introduction of new remote monitoring programmes be developed to support the ongoing transformation of elective care.

Personal Health Records:

Expansion of a Personal Health Record (PHR) solution – Patient Knows Best (PKB) – continues across the region.

A PHR allows people to access their health record online giving peace of mind that they are more involved in decisions about their care and that wherever they go, wherever they might need care, their healthcare professional will have the full picture of their condition and care pathway. The PKB solution has been rolled out at York and Scarborough, Northern Lincolnshire and Goole, and Harrogate Trusts. It supports remote monitoring and self-management of certain conditions and has integration with the NHS App and the Yorkshire and Humber Care Record.

Care Homes

The Digital Record Enabling and Management Support (DREaMS) Team was created to support care homes across the region.

Working with IT specialists, a Digital Maturity Ladder (DML) tool was created to enable stakeholders to easily understand where an individual care provider is on their journey to adopting technology. The DML provides a linear approach to adopting the right technology at the right time with best practice and accreditation and makes it clear where investment and support is required.

The DML has now been recognised as a key development for Humber and North Yorkshire with validation from NHS England and the Digital Social Care Board.

The DREaMs team include staff from East Riding of Yorkshire Council Adult Social Care, Hull and East Riding Care Association and supported by the Humber & North Yorkshire ICS Office of the Chief Digital Information Officer (CDIO). This mix of skills and experience from across the system has really helped to engage with and onboard the care providers.

Virtual Consultations

Online and video consultations give people a way to digitally contact their care providers and get health information, advice and support.

The 2021/22 Priorities and Operational planning guidance target was set for us to deliver virtual / remote consultations for at least 25% of all necessary outpatient activity. Following the negotiation of a two-year contract Hull University Teaching Hospital, North Lincolnshire and Goole Hospital and York and Scarborough Teaching Hospital all adopted the Attend Anywhere solution to deliver increased virtual consultations. As a results, the region successfully achieved virtual / remote consultations for 27% of outpatient activity (417,000) in 2020/21, equating to:

6,950 hours of patient time saved through avoided face to face appointments
- 12,182,088 patient travel miles saved. Equivalent to going around the world 490 times and 192,875 less car parking spaces required saving patient’s money
- 6.3 quality adjusted life years saved
- A reduction of 2489.5 tonnes of CO2 emissions. It would take 1309.5 hectares of forests a year to capture that amount of CO2.

The ICS has also made sure that virtual and online consultations are available at all primary care practices for GPs to utilise as appropriate. As part of this work the ICS has led on a national pilot to ensure that GPs are fully empowered to ensure their patients are aware of all access routes available to primary care services.

Maternity

During 2021/22 the health and care partnership worked to procure a single maternity IT system to be used across all NHS Trusts.

A single maternity IT system has enabled data to be shared across the region with consistent processes and reporting as well as ensure mandated fields met national requirements. Through a collaborative process, the project team were successful in bidding for £1.5m to procure the solution as well as new IT equipment and also support the project implementation in all Trusts. The new maternity system includes an app for women, birthing people and families to access their records and test results, as well as enabling them to view information relating to their pregnancy, birth and beyond. The deployment of such a solution enables care providers across our partnership to provider better quality care from 2022/23 onwards.

End of Life Care

We have delivered an Electronic Palliative Care Co-ordination System (EPaCCS) to enable the recording and sharing of a patient’s end-of-life care preferences.

EPaCCS is an end-of-life preferences system including patients preferred place of care and death, the circumstances under which they’d want to be admitted to hospital, whether they would want CPR to be attempted and details about their medications, and is a key enabler to supporting patients during the most difficult of care pathways

Across the partnership and after a successful pilot EPaCCS has been successfully rolled out in Vale of York, Scarborough & Ryedale and Northern Lincolnshire. The solution has been instrumental in supporting the coordination of care during the Covid-19 pandemic, when there has been a major focus on Advanced Care Planning for vulnerable patients.

To date, over 7000 EPaCCS records have been created, and the solution is enabling collaborative working to support end-of-life patients, reducing duplication, and ensuring that the most up-to-date view of a patients’ preferences and status are visible and updatable across different health and care settings.

To ensure the important information stored within the EPaCCS records is widely available, we have integrated the system into the YHCR, which is already enabling vital data to be accessed by 111 and 999 emergency services.

The introduction of this EPaCCS digital solution has been recognised nationally as best practice and has been published as an NHS Blueprint that shares our experience and approach with other parts of the country.

Support Emergency & Unplanned Care

We continue to provide new digital enablers to support professionals and patients receive the most appropriate unplanned care.

We have provided the digital systems to allow direct booking for access times from the 111 service into the emergency department, primary care, and unplanned treatment hub services. This helps to ensure when a patient needs care for the first time, they are in the right place getting the care they need.

We will continue to support this work through 22/23 by:

Providing a dedicated and standardised clinical messaging tool to allow clinicians to liaise with each other and ensure the most appropriate care pathway is followed for each patient.
Working with the YHCR team to improve the inter-service booking facility to further support patients are seen in the right place first time