Industry news in brief

This month’s industry round-up features news that Bradford Teaching Hospitals reduced agency spend by 27% with Allocate 247Time, and a new Healthcare Adisory Board has been created for the UK and Ireland.

Bradford Teaching Hospitals reduces agency spend by 27% with Allocate 247Time

Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has implemented Allocate’s 247Time system, which has delivered a 27% reduction in agency spend in the first 12 months.

As well as ensuring high standards of patient care, 247Time has helped the trust achieve better expenditure control, generating further efficiencies and cost savings.

Allocate’s 247Time provides the trust with agency management, payroll and direct engagement technology, replacing its previous system whereby each division managed agency workers separately, often using paper records.

It enables the trust to link its eRostering platform to agency and bank systems, allowing quick, safe and cost-efficient sourcing of nursing and medical staff.

Rachel Pyrah, flexible workforce services manager at Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said: “The cost efficiencies delivered by the new system have been significant. Better visibility and reporting have allowed us to reduce agency spend in our first year and we are on track to reduce this even further in 2019.

“Even more importantly, we can now track and measure patient care standards, identifying quickly whether an agency staff member is compliant with our clinical practices rather than having to rely on agency records.”

New UK and Ireland Healthcare Advisory Board created

Allocate Software has created a new advisory board, including members from key stakeholders in the healthcare industry as well as its own customers.

The board will work closely with the Allocate leadership team to ensure further innovation.  It will focus on how Allocate’s software platform can best support healthcare organisations as they manage the demand for more care in the context of the 20% global shortage of healthcare workers.

It is chaired by Sir Andrew Cash, OBE, and led from Allocate by its CEO, Nick Wilson.

One of the main goals of the UK & Ireland Healthcare Advisory Board is to steer Allocate’s direction of technology innovation to deliver on its commitment to work in partnership with healthcare organisations and stakeholders.

“Bringing together informed and experienced representatives from our industry, who live and breathe the challenges of the global workforce crisis every day, and who also have an understanding of Government policy too, is an important step forward,” Sir Cash said.

“We need to ensure technology works hand-in-hand with the industry so that it invests in the right developments to deliver a step-change in the way technology can positively impact care delivery.”

Sheffield Hallam University joins Northern Health Science Alliance

Sheffield Hallam University has joined the Northern Health Science Alliance (NHSA) as an associate member, joining nine other universities, ten research-intensive NHS Trusts and four Academic Health Science Networks across the North.

The Alliance works closely with its members to promote the life science sector in the North and to increase awareness of and drive investment into the region.

Sheffield Hallam University’s membership comes as the university is preparing to open its multimillion-pound Advanced Wellbeing Research Centre (AWRC) early next year.

The AWRC, which has received £14m investment from the UK’s Department of Health and private sector support from partners including Toshiba and Westfield Health, will provide state-of-the-art, fully instrumented indoor and outdoor laboratories and a team of over 70 researchers delivering collaborative projects.

The centre will develop technical services and products from concept to commercialisation, acting as a hothouse of innovation by bringing together those who make apps, activity loggers, sports equipment, orthotics and clinical devices.

Kings College Hospital London in UAE partners with Wolters Kluwer for clinical decision support

Wolters Kluwer, a global provider of healthcare technology announced that Kings College Hospital London (KCH) in the UAE has chosen UpToDate Advanced, the company’s flagship clinical decision support (CDS) solution.

The technology is available to physicians, nurses and pharmacists across all four KCH medical facilities in the Middle East to help advance the healthcare provider’s evidence-based clinical practice and support a strategy built on world-class service delivery.

UpToDate Advanced is a guided clinical decision support solution that uses algorithms and interactive pathways to provide recommendations tailored to individual patients.  The system also tackles the issue of care variability— even in the most common medical conditions.

Christian Schuhmacher, chief executive officer at King’s College Hospital London, Dubai, said: “Our goal is to provide evidence-based medicine that is centred on scientific findings and proven concepts and exactly deliver the amount of care that is needed; not more, not less, and cater to what the patient truly needs.”

“The whole driver behind the hospital investing in UpToDate Advanced is to achieve patient safety. It is therefore a very positive move for us to partner with Wolters Kluwer, which provides best in class clinical information resources that can help us achieve our objectives.”

Q-Surgical secures HSBC funding for wound-closure devices

A Bristol-based medical supply firm, Q-Surgical, has secured a finance package from HSBC UK to meet rising demand for its range of wound-closure medical devices.

Q-Surgical, which was founded by Helene Brown in 2013, is a prime distributor of surgical sutures, a medical device used to stitch wounds during surgery, to NHS and private hospitals across the UK.

In 2015, Q-Surgical partnered with Lotus to solely distribute their products in the UK.

In 2017, Q-Surgical won a contract to be one of the approved suppliers on the NHS Supply Chain, which ensured that every NHS hospital in England and Wales had access to the firm’s products, broadening the company’s customer base.

The funding package from HSBC UK was allocated from the bank’s £550 million SME Fund which supports SMEs across Bristol, Bath, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire.