Success for the Northern Trust at eHealth Awards

Staff at the Northern Health and Social Care Trust are celebrating after scooping two major awards at the annual HSC eHealth and Care Awards.

The awards recognise the significant contribution made to the improvement of care through the innovative use of technology.

The winning project for the category, ‘Technology Innovation’, was the Northern Trust’s project – Electronic Referrals Processing for District Nursing. In the past, district nurses received patient referrals from GPs via a telephone call to a Call Centre. The new innovative system now means that GP referrals are automatically loaded into the district nurse’s caseload system. They can pick these up throughout the day and act on them as appropriate. GPs can check the status of their referrals at any time. This has enormous benefits for all staff and service users.

The winner of the ‘eHealth Innovation’ award was the NIECR eReferrals Triage Management Solution. It was developed by the Business Services Organisation (BSO), working in close collaboration with the Northern Trust. It allows for faster, better and safer decisions to be made about patients’ care. As soon as a referral is sent from the GP to the hospital it is electronically available to the hospital clinician for assessment. The clinical decision is captured electronically which helps speed up the management of the referral. The tool is now used in over 20 specialties in the Trust and has been designed to scale to provide a solution for all of Northern Ireland, with some specialties in Belfast and in the West already using the system.

Commenting on the awards, Northern Trust Chief Executive, Tony Stevens said:
“I congratulate our winners and am immensely proud of all those who work tirelessly every day to deliver quality care to all of our service users. Having a genuine focus on person-centred care means being open to change and being creative in the way that we do things. Embracing technology and all that it can offer in terms of communication, and the sharing of information within and between health and social care teams, is vital if we are to best need the needs of the population that we serve.”

In addition to the category winners, Dr Michael Scott, Head of Pharmacy and Medicines Management at the Northern Trust was also shortlisted for the eHealth Champion Award.

Pictured are:
Winner of the Technology Innovation Award was Electronic Referrals Processing for District Nursing Una Campbell, William Campbell, Dr Ian Clements, Alison Dickson, Audrey Harris, Wilbert Allen, Adrian Culleton.

Winner of the eHealth Innovation Award was NIECR eReferrals Triage Management Solution. From left: Sean Donaghy, HSCB; Deborah McNeilly, DHSSPS; Gary Loughran, BSO; Dr Ian Clements, Chairman, HSCB; Mr Jaroslav Novak, NHSCT and Lee Brolly, BSO.

23rd November 2015