eConsult and CLEO Systems collaborate to improve patient pathways

eConsult Health and CLEO Systems and are working together in a bid to support urgent care providers and improve their patients’ experience of using their services.

The collaboration between the two will involve creating an interface between eConsult Health’s eTriage software and CLEO’s Patient Tracker in order to create a seamless patient pathway.

CLEO Systems provides digital solutions for patient management in urgent and primary care while eConsult’s eTriage solution works by automatically checking in and triaging patients within emergency departments to help reduce waiting times.

The initiative is an example of how interoperability across the healthcare system can be used to improve the patient journey as patients are benefitting from joined-up care as a result of the co-ordination between health and care providers.

Mark Harmon, strategy and brand director at eConsult Health, said: “Digital triage is emerging as a powerful tool in reducing hospital waiting times and easing the burden on A&E staff. It ensures a patient only has to explain their symptoms and provide a history once and enables hospitals to prioritise the sickest people and most urgent cases. By joining forces with CLEO we are closing more and more of the information gaps that slow down or trip up doctors, nurses and administrative staff working in a pressurised urgent care environment.”

In East Kent, the Estuary View urgent treatment centre (UTC) was able to benefit from the partnership between CLEO Systems, eConsult Health and also EMIS with an end-to-end digital solution. The interoperable solutions meant patients could be pre-assessed, tracked and treated, while moving effortlessly through the patient pathway.

Richard Burton, commercial sales and marketing director at CLEO Systems, said: “This collaboration is the first of its type in a UTC, the value and positive impact this could make to the provision of urgent care is truly exciting.”

He added: “Interoperability is a key driver for us. It is very positive that we have been able to begin to overcome barriers to interoperability by working with eConsult Health. Given the success of our collaboration, I look forward to seeing the benefits to urgent care providers, especially given that it continues to be such a challenging time, and it is clear that easing pressure on urgent care has never been so important.”