Anoto has built a custom Community Resource Team (CRT) portal for the Gwent Frailty Consortium, comprising of Aneurin Bevan University Health Board (ABUHB) and five local councils in Wales.
The new portal supports multi-agency teams providing care under the Gwent Frailty Programme, which works with more than 600,000 people in South Wales and is currently used by 300 carers, with the potential to roll out to 9,000 carers, doctors, hospitals and non-clinical staff to build a patient-centric solution with a complete, auditable log of care received by a patient.
The new portal minimises hospital admissions, enables earlier hospital discharge and empowers the patient by leaving the care record in their home
Gwent Frailty Consortium’s community-based teams were already using Anoto’s digital writing technology to capture key information from its patients, which allowed the nursing team to leave the original record with the patient and spend more time with them, as opposed to travelling back and forth to the office between patient visits. Following the successful pen deployment in Gwent, the Frailty Consortium in partnership with Anoto further developed a custom CRT portal, which would form a basis of a true eHealth and eSocial care system.
Gwent Frailty Consortium’s previous portal was a prototype and lacked the resilience and performance to support the enterprise and therefore it wanted to develop a new bespoke solution to improve the user experience. The new portal – developed by Anoto in the UK – allows hospital staff and community care teams to securely access patients’ care history and update it in real-time, using Anoto’s digital pen technology. All care episodes are recorded against a single patient record; providing the team with a log of episodes of care received by any patient, with community care teams being able to manage their diaries through their smartphones. Thanks to the mobile element, care teams are able to refer patients to colleagues, accept appointments while in the field and access all the patient information as and when needed.
“The CRT portal was built specifically for the Gwent Frailty Consortium in order to move its patient care practices from episodic care to a patient centric care model,” said Richard Sargent, project delivery director at Anoto.
“The new portal minimises hospital admissions, enables earlier hospital discharge and empowers the patient by leaving the care record in their home. Patients thrive better in their own homes and familiar surroundings and the portal is key to sharing information with other care teams and means that there is no need for unnecessary hospital admissions. It also allows for each practitioner to view and update the patient record, or to request referrals or escalations as needed. We aimed to build a truly bespoke portal, which would allow the Gwent Frailty Consortium to achieve its goals, facilitating cross-agency sharing of data and to provide a fully patient-centric care system to the Gwent Frailty Programme.”
“After supplying Anoto with a specification for the new CRT portal, Anoto got to work quickly and involved us in the process every step of the way, by providing mock-ups of screens and regular progress reports. During the development process, we worked closely with the team, testing and giving feedback of what worked well and which screens needed more work or were slow to load,” said Chris Slape, frailty programme informatics project manager at the Aneurin Bevan Health Board.
With the combination of mobile technologies such as the digital pens, smartphones and traditional computers, we have enabled our care teams to pull into one log all patient information, that can be accessed and updated
“The team responded quickly to our comments and worked hard to resolve all issues promptly. The workflow screen is used daily by the community resource teams to monitor and action their referrals. Our staff have reported back that they like the additional filters and sort functionality and are pleased that it loads quicker than the old version. They also like the search screen, which returns results quicker and in a clearer view, due to the new patient-centric functionality. Staff also like the editable demographics and have reported that they find the screens clear and easy to use. So much so that training to use the new system has been minimal.”
The portal has been rolled out in Blenau Gwent, Monmouthshire, Caerphilly, Newport and Torfaen so far, with the possibility for further deployment throughout Wales. Users of the new CRT portal have also noticed immediate benefits, particularly with referrals of patients.
“The new portal is quicker to navigate and loads information faster, which is great as I am having to navigate it frequently when on the phone most days,” says Patricia Bartley, falls co-ordinator at the Gwent Frailty Team.
“It is much easier to identify the falls service referrals since we can limit the viewing page to our own service rather than have to view rapid and reablement referrals. The layout feels less cluttered and is crisper to look at.”
“We have worked with Anoto on the digital pen deployment and it exceeded our expectations since the live deployment,” added Jon Holmes, head of health informatics at ABUHB.
“With the combination of mobile technologies such as the digital pens, smartphones and traditional computers, we have enabled our care teams to pull into one log all patient information, that can be accessed and updated. The digital forms which are left in homes enable patients to be in control of all the decisions relating to their care and allows for the carers to carry out a care plan with full visibility of all care that has been undertaken.”
