Leeds Children’s Hospital embraces digital solutions

The Leeds Children’s Hospital, part of the Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, is taking steps to improve data accuracy, minimise manual effort and improve the overall care patients receive by using new digital ways of working.

The changes to the way the team work include the introduction of ePAWS, a new method of monitoring the hospital’s paediatric patients. The Paediatric Advanced Warning Score (PAWS) solution is an alert system used to identify patients who are at risk of deterioration. It uses the patient’s clinical observations to recommend a response and next steps.

The system is a step up from the traditional method the clinical team were using of calculating scores manually and recording them on paper. The improved version works on a mobile version of the trust’s electronic health record PPM+. It can be used to record clinical observations, calculate PAWS and record any resulting interventions.

For staff it minimises the potential for any manual errors and help speeds up the process of recording this information. Real time information is accessible to everyone who needs it and results and task reminders are automatically displayed.

The hospital has also improved their digital way of working by introducing a new height and weight e-form within PPM+. Clinicians no longer need to use a paper-based method to record and track patients’ growth, instead moving this function to a digital version.

Those growth charts then become an integral part of a patient’s electronic health record, which means clinicians can monitor and spot any trends.

Celia McKenzie, head of nursing at Leeds Children’s Hospital said: “These two projects are the first of a number of digitisation projects in Leeds Children’s Hospital. We’re really embracing digital because it can make a big difference, helping reduce manual effort and time taken to complete paperwork, improve data accuracy, and ultimately improve the care we provide for children and young people.”

This summer, the trust selected Agilisys to provide a cloud-based data platform to support its digital strategy.