Ephesoft has been nominated for the Document Management Award in the category Public Sector Project of the Year, based on our work for Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust.
The DM Awards, organized by the publishers of Document Manager – the UK’s only specialist IT title dedicated to the document and content management sector – has been running for over ten years. The online voting process allows readers of the magazine and eNewsletter to reward suppliers of software, hardware and services that have made a real-world difference to their organizations.
The DM Awards features unique ‘Project of the Year’ categories which invite vendors to submit the success stories of which they are most proud in that year. These case studies are judged by a panel of independent industry experts, consultants and analysts.
NHS England and the Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust
The National Health Service (NHS), one of the largest healthcare providers worldwide, faces immense challenges when it comes to digital transformation. With a reliance on outdated technology such as fax machines and pagers, the 2018 announcement of a new tech vision for the future of the NHS was welcomed by staff and patients alike. A move to a more efficient connection between health care providers such as General Practitioners (GPs), specialist clinics and referral hospitals aimed to increase efficiency, reduce errors and waiting times, all the while adhering to strict data security protocols for patient details.
The Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust provides services to over 770,00 residents, plus specialist services for further 5.4 million people from across the region. They are one of the largest employers in the area, with around 18,000 employees across several sites.
Ephesoft – NHS Project
At the Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, patients have the right to begin consultant-led treatment within 18 weeks of referral by their GP. This Right to Treatment (RTT) is set in the NHS Constitution.
The LTH Trust found that meeting the RTT targets was hindered by the complicated referral process. The referral process for GPs to send patients for further treatment was unwieldy and error-prone. Referral documents in a range of formats were sent to the NHS healthcare trust via various transmission methods, including fax and email. These documents were printed then manually entered into the patient management system, an incredibly time-consuming task.
As part of the wide-ranging digital transformation project of the NHS, a solution was sought for this issue. The software would have to meet the NHS minimum technical standards to ensure that it was compatible with other open standard software.
Content Capture by Ephesoft was used to capture these incoming records, process them accurately without manual input by staff, and archive and deliver to the Alfresco Digital Platform, which includes ECM and BPM.
The solution includes Ephesoft Fax-Gateway for incoming faxes and integration of NHS Digital e-RS service, which is vital for acute NHS hospital trusts.
These documents aren’t standardized, so the information contained in them must first be classified and organized by the system. The data is conveyed to the electronic patient file which all relevant healthcare staff, across multiple departments, can access. Users don’t need to switch between software platforms, as all the information is collected in one place.
The referral process is now faster and more efficient, which brought about an impressive reduction of manual data input and data transfer errors. The printing of documents has been drastically reduced, which aids the LTH in their goal to becoming a paper-light organization. These improvements, in turn, led to a rise in employee and patient satisfaction.
The team from Ephesoft is proud to be part of such a critical digitization project and rewarded by the knowledge that they are supporting patients and easing the workload of hard-working NHS staff.
More information and voting: www.dmawards.com
