Dartford and Gravesham looking to improve digital maturity with Alcidion

Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust is looking to improve its digital maturity through a partnership with Australia’s Alcidion.

The trust, which serves some 500,000 people across three hospitals, will introduce a range of technology platforms designed by Alcidion with a view to “leapfrog” the digital maturity of other trusts in the region.

This includes deploying Alcidion’s health analytics platform, Miya Precision, and a clinical messaging app designed to lessen hospital staff’s reliance on paper and pagers.

Alcidion, parent company of UK technology provider Patientrack, will also provide its e-observation and early warning system of the same name.

Neil Perry, associate director of digital transformation at Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust, said the Australian company’s products were “the right fit to help us meet our commitment to use digital technology to improve patient outcomes and share these improvements with other NHS trusts.”

Perry added: “We believe its technology can empower our clinical staff to make informed decisions and focus on what they do best – deliver excellent patient care.”

The contract aims to bring trust-wide improvements to Dartford and Gravesham by strengthening integration across clinical systems.

Together, the deployment will support electronic patient observations, electronic paper charts, clinical assessments, clinical noting, patient flow, bed management and electronic discharge summaries for GPs.

The five-year partnership is first to be signed between Alcidion and a UK healthcare provider.

While Dartford and Gravesham is not part of NHS England’s Global Digital Exemplar (GDE) programme, the trust’s “self-made” digital exemplar programme has been conceived in a similar vein to NHS England’s national initiative.

The contract will also support Dartford and Gravesham’s role within the St Guy’s and St Thomas’ Healthcare Alliance by allowing it to combine data from various healthcare systems into a single dashboard, which will display events from both inside and outside the hospital.

Perry explained: “We will have real time clinical information to share into the Alliance’s Shared Care Record for when we refer emergency or elective patients.

“This should strengthen the Alliance’s ability to keep patients nearer to home, with the GSTT specialists able to better advise and inform Dartford and Gravesham clinicians on the best course of action based on the real-time data insights.

“We hope this will see fewer emergency transfers and more patients cared for locally.”

Perry said that the trust was also “very excited by the possibilities in the use of artificial intelligence and natural language processing” offered by the Alcidion’s Miya Precision platform, which offers the capability to digitise clinical dictation and code it into SNOMED.

Alcidion’s managing director, Kate Quirke, added: “This is a major win for Alcidion, and is the first integrated installation of the complete product platform – Miya Precision, Patientrack and Smartpage – outside of Australia. This contract is solid proof that we can introduce an innovative new technology solution to the UK market.”