Imperial rolls out check-in kiosks

Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust is rolling out 75 self-service patient kiosks across five hospitals to speed up check-in times and ease the pressure on its staff.

The trust is deploying the kiosks, provided by Jayex Technology, at its St Mary’s, Charing Cross, Hammersmith, Western Eye and Queen Charlotte and Chelsea hospitals to cover about one million outpatient encounters.

Kevin Jarrold, the trust’s chief information officer, said the kiosks will help to reduce pressure on staff by helping them to manage patients, and has already received “excellent feedback” from administrative teams.

He added that the trust’s priority is streamlining outpatient procedures for patients, and he hopes the kiosks will help it to improve productivity while addressing patients’ expectations around the greater use of electronic communication.

The kiosks let patients to confirm their arrival using a touchscreen, directing them to the correct waiting area and alerting staff to their presence before calling them for consultations via screens and an audio system.

They are linked to the trust’s Millennium patient administration system from Cerner in real-time using a bi-directional HL7 interface, and are equipped with barcode readers for barcoded patient letters which are not currently in use but will be activated in future.

A proof of concept trial last year saw between 70% and 80% of patients use the kiosks.

Early use of the kiosks has resulted in increased collection of data such as personal details, demographical data and contact information, with the average number of data collections per check-in increasing from two to eight or nine.

The first phase of the deployment has been completed, covering 11 departments and 50% of outpatient activity, while the second phase will cover up to 15 more departments for the remaining 50% activity.

Imperial deployed its Cerner Millennium PAS in April, following a series of delays that pushed back the go-live by roughly one year.