Hancock’s chief tech adviser visits GDE site to hear about digital initiatives

The chief technology adviser to the secretary of state for health and social care has visited one of the global digital exemplar (GDE) sites in Southampton to hear about their digital initiatives.

Hadley Beeman, who works with Matt Hancock, visited University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust (UHS) on 1 May to discuss the progress being made as part of the NHS England programme which aims to create a group of reference sites for NHS digitisation.

During her visit Beeman was shown a number of projects the trust has been working on.

This included digiRounds, which allows mobile device users to access key clinical information including observations, drug charts, laboratory results and handover notes on smartphones and tablets.

Staff also demonstrated the benefits of Medxnote, a WhatsApp-style messaging app which enables staff to exchange confidential patient information and photographs quickly but securely and is designed to replace pagers.

Other innovations discussed were interactive whiteboards which display information taken directly from a patient’s electronic record, including clinical alerts such as existing medical conditions, length of admission and predicted discharge date, and My medical record, a personal online health record which allows patients to access their health record from home.

Adrian Byrne, director of informatics at UHS, said: “We were delighted to welcome Hadley to the trust to see what we have been doing with the investment in digital projects across the organisation.

“We have and are introducing a range of clinical systems, computer systems and world-leading medical technologies as part of a dynamic programme and are always grateful for the opportunity to show what has been achieved and what we are working towards.”