We’re pleased to announce the Trust’s plans to introduce a new mobile app that will improve clinical decision-making and patient safety across the hospital, as part of our existing digital strategy.
Through a partnership with the British company DeepMind Health, we are implementing the Streams app – mobile software which makes clinical information readily available to staff at the patient’s bedside.
From its launch next year staff will be able to use Streams for vital signs observations, capturing information such as heart rate, blood pressure, respiratory rate, temperature and alertness, which will instantly be available to other Yeovil Hospital Streams users involved in caring for that patient.
Later applications will include notifications about deteriorations in patient health, and alerts to the potential presence of serious conditions such as acute kidney injury. Enhancing clinical expertise and experience in this way enables staff to react even more swiftly to ensure the best outcomes for patients. It will also provide a range of teamwork and collaboration tools across devices and operating systems.
The new Streams app will not use any information that is not already available to hospital staff and the patient data remains under the control of Yeovil Hospital at all times.
Our partnership with DeepMind forms part of our strategy to make the best use of new and emerging technology to improve treatment and patient health and is the fourth Streams partnership, following on from the company’s work with Musgrove Hospital in Taunton, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, and the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust.
Dr Tony Smith, consultant anaesthetist and the hospitals Clinical Chief Information Officer, said:
“Technology has an increasingly important role to play in the way our hospital provides care, which goes far beyond the move from paper to digital records.
“We are therefore very pleased to be working with DeepMind; a company at the forefront of the application of digital technologies and better use of data to improve healthcare.
“The Streams application will enhance the expertise and experience of our clinicians, by processing and presenting existing data, applied to existing NHS algorithms, in more accessible and more responsive ways. The results will be quicker, more informed clinical decisions and better outcomes for patients.
“Everything about our partnership with DeepMind and the products we implement is about improving our ability to care for the patient. The information that will enable the Streams application to work and support staff to make vital decisions about treatment and care is data that is already collected and held by our hospital, and remains under our control. It will be used for no other purpose than to inform the delivery of care to our patients, in the same way as existing observations and patient record products in use in our hospital.
“Describing how data will be used will form a central element of the forthcoming engagement which will happen with patients, the public and staff in the coming weeks and months.”
Dr Dominic King, clinician lead at DeepMind, said:
“We are really pleased to be working with the team at Yeovil District Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. They want to use health technologies in a way that benefits patients and the doctors and nurses who care for them. This is a goal we share, and it’s the reason why we built Streams. By putting together all the information a clinician needs, we think Streams can reduce the time nurses and doctors currently spend on administrative tasks. This should help them make quicker and better decisions about the right care for patients. It’s a tool I wish I’d had when I worked as a doctor in the NHS.
“We’re also looking forward to working with the Trust to talk to patients and the public about our partnership, and hearing from them what they think about how these types of technology should be used in care.”
A programme of events, displays and communication will be hosted across the Trust, for patients and the public providing opportunities to find out how Streams and our partnership with DeepMind will improve the way we care.
Ends
To see a copy of the Trust’s contract with DeepMind, you can click HERE (opens in a different website)
To see a copy of the Trust’s Privacy Impact Assessment, which describes how information will be used to enable the safe and secure delivery of the app, click HERE
Categorised in: Trust news and events
This post was written by Communications Team
Comments are closed here.