Heartbeat: Investing in IT: It’s not all LOWs, WOWs and COWs

January 17, 2021

14 months on from the launch of Unity where we traded towers of notes and a mystifying mix of processes for one perfectly formed and unified system we look back and learn from our endeavour, challenging our practices, learning from our failures and celebrating our successes.

Whilst launching a new system in IT seems like a simple job, it’s quickly complicated by the fact that there are thousands of clinical colleagues and almost 500,000 patients relying on you. The success or failure of your project could be the difference between life and death, being treated or transferred. And, let’s be honest, NHS IT projects are not generally known for their successes.

However on the weekend of 22 September when most of us were fast asleep, across our Trust colleagues very quickly transitioned from our outdated processes and over to Unity, bringing to fruition one of the biggest changes to our Trust. It has had an impact on every patient we treat and as we have since learnt, not a moment too soon with the onset of Coronavirus.

Many of you appreciate the incredible changes the IT department had to put in in preparation for Unity; hundreds of new devices, WiFi across the Trust, improved connections to all our sites, a 24-hour service desk and a new approach from the whole team. Others may have forgotten where we came from or not appreciate the journey so far.

Alongside the launch of Unity, colleagues across the Trust received a brand new range of COWs, LOWs and WOWs, that being computers, laptops and workstations on wheels with the latest and greatest in wristband printers, barcode scanners and in some places infection control compliant keyboards and mice. For the first time in a while, we finally had a stable level of equipment in place for colleagues to be able to use reliably, without the need to queue up or crowd around one computer.

To find out more about the developments in IT since Unity rolled out, Heartbeat caught up with Chief Informatics Officer, Martin Sadler. He said: “The launch of Unity came at the back of an incredibly busy year for informatics. We supported our clinical teams, the roll-out of equipment and the epic endeavour from all the Trust’s Unity Champions and others in training all of our staff on our new system and that was no mean feat. I am proud of what the informatics team have achieved so far. The additional demands that arrived for the team as a result of the Trust working more ‘digitally’ have been huge and the team have responded extremely well, helped not least by the support and thanks from our end users.

”We are, however, the first to recognise that we have a long way to go yet. There are still systems that are in dire need of replacing, equipment that is past its best before date and a heap of new requests to take our digital abilities to the next level – our Digital Ambitions.

”We have learnt a lot in the last year about the hardware that we sent out. Some areas really cannot work with laptops on wheels, cables get chopped in other bits of furniture moving, printing between label printers and A4 printers isn’t always simple enough, charging the computers on trolleys often gets forgotten and, a computer that is not owned by an individual do not get the love and attention that personal computers get.

”We realised quite quickly that the original requests for kit had been understated in several areas and we let computers naturally move to where they were needed which then meant that they weren’t connected to the right printers.

”We also found that people assumed that someone else had reported any equipment faults which meant nobody had. We introduced regular ward walks by informatics staff, but these have become more time consuming and more difficult to visit everywhere. We are looking for an easier way to report issues.

Now we know the most appropriate equipment by location we are ordering more stock on trolleys to help across the Trust. We are using our experience of faults to help the clinicians make better informed decisions this time round for choosing the equipment. And most of all, we are open to discussion. If there’s something that doesn’t quite work the way it should, we want colleagues to come forward and say so.

“Alongside the lessons learnt from Unity, there have been some challenges posed by COVID-19, and we have been able to play our part. We were already doing limited remote working and video meetings and, the expansion of this has shown that we were doing the right thing. The preparation for Unity had put us in a better place than we would have been otherwise.

”We are heartened by the way we have coped and feel that our efforts have been worthwhile and, we are working on further improving our services, introducing new hardware to the worst struggling areas and becoming the best IT service that we can. We are open and receptive to suggestions and feedback.”