Video Consultations in Secondary Care

With the emergence of promising new technologies and a flood of data, healthcare innovators face a new set of opportunities and challenges. These will define the next decade of operational efficiency in healthcare delivery. Our event ‘’Taking the pAIn out of AI’’ in collaboration with IET and WAI, looked at how the brilliant minds of Finn Catling, Eleonora Harwich, Jim Ritchie and Catherine Davies have navigated the challenges across the NHS. This was followed by an engaging

Our software, Space Finder, has been shortlisted for the HSJ workforce efficiency award. Many hospitals are not delivering planned care activity to plan. This is impacting their patients, who are waiting longer, their performance (RTT), and their finances. It also means that workforce is stretched further as theatres need to be operated for longer. Increasing throughput in core hours is hard and often runs into resistance: “theatres are busier than ever”, “case-mix is more co

Over the next five years funding for the NHS will increase by 3.4%, compared to a historical 5-year average of 2.2% (see long-term plan). But productivity growth remains as important as ever: one of the challenges set out in the Long-Term plan, is for the NHS to make productivity gains of at least 1.1% per year over the next five years. To help build a growing and thriving NHS for years to come, the NHS needs to invest to drive productivity gains – shifting the “production po

Originally published by Reform on 29th October 2018. Putting the needs of the patient at the forefront of decision making by hospital executives is hard – there’s a lot going on and the decision to do something for someone can come at a cost to someone else. Everyone has their own explanation of why delays occur, or targets are missed. Often these are not tested or validated with data or fail to involve input from front line teams. Anecdote goes head to head against data, rat

Many hospitals are not delivering planned care activity to plan. This is impacting their patients, who are waiting longer, their performance (RTT), and their finances. At the same time, core capacity is being underutilised. Increasing throughput in core hours is hard and often runs into resistance: “theatres are busier than ever”, “case-mix is more complex”, “staff are new”, “turnaround times are longer”, “there aren’t enough beds”. So, recovering planned throughput levels ca

Truly honoured that Edge Health has been invited to sponsor the Doctor Award at the 2018 WellChild Awards. An amazing charity, helping over 100,00 Read more here: www.edgehealth.co.uk/wellchild18 #NHS #WellChild #featured

As AI research is making it mainstream there is a trend emerging in healthcare: hospitals are focusing on digital infrastructure and AI start-ups on improved diagnosis and delivery of care. As hospitals are resource constrained and struggle with more elderly patients and chronic illnesses however there is a crucial third dimension that is neglected: AI applied to operational improvement. The reason start-ups shy away from this one is that its tricky to identify the problem, u

Over the past year we have been working with South Tees NHS Foundation Trust to build Space Finder, an AI-powered tool to create optimal surgical lists and improve theatre utilisation. Using Space Finder, South Tees have been able to increase productivity by 60 cases per week and switch off weekend working. Hear how on this HFMA webinar. #hfma #featured #NHS

INTRO Bed Planner is a planning tool to help hospital managers plan bed capacity, so that it is closely aligned to demand. This helps with the flow of patients through a hospital environment, by identifying potential bottlenecks. By using routinely collected data, Bed Planner allows historic bed occupancy to be forensically modelled and decomposed. When this is combined with simulation modelling, it provides predictive analytics of how bed occupancy may change under a rang

Optimise theatre lists, so that you increase the productivity of your theatres during core hours. Do this with Space Finder, which uses your data with real-time machine learning technology to propose optimal operating lists that make the best use of available theatre time. #featured #NHS #ai

Our recent blog, Can’t See the Ward for the Trees, discussed the recent headlines about declining NHS bed numbers. The headline masks a more complicated reality: everyone working in the NHS knows that acute beds are under more pressure than ever before. Beds may be running at unsustainable levels of occupancy, but this does not mean they are being used effectively. In this blog, we are focusing on one part of this issue: are acute beds always being used to treat patients in n

There is nothing quite as unifying for a local community than the loss of beds at the local hospital. So it is not surprising that research published by the King’s Fund, which showed that the number of hospital beds in England have more than halved in the past 30 years, caught the headlines last week. But focusing on bed numbers alone does not tell the whole story. There are many reasons why fewer hospital beds may not be a bad thing – especially if it means people are (safel

Amid the headlines of staff shortages, hospital deficits, overwhelmed A&E, and a lack of social care leaving people unable to leave hospital, it is hard to ignore the NHS crisis. And according to the Health Foundation, the NHS funding commitments from all three political parties are inadequate. Demand pressures from a growing and ageing population, and increasing numbers of people with complex chronic health problems such as diabetes, will all add cost pressure. And unlike ot

Not long ago, as I was presenting some findings from our work, one of the hospital executive said to me “do we really do that many outpatient appointments each day”? This followed a series of other “do we really do that” questions during the presentation, which had covered a range of areas from length of stay and bed occupancy to variations in clinical behaviour. Even for those unfamiliar with the functioning of the NHS, some of the findings were deeply troubling. At the end

So, according to a recent report from PwC, 66% of people in the Middle East are willing to replace human doctors with AI and robots. But many others have warned of the dangers from AI. Elon Musk, the tech billionaire behind reusable space rockets and self-driving cars, has set up a “billion dollar fund” to save the world from AI. So should we be excited about the prospect of AI over human doctors, or should we be worried – it is our health after all? It all starts with what y

In what is called the Internet of Things, physical devices are becoming smart. These technologies will drive what is being called the fourth industrial revolutions. If you have any doubt that this will happen the following video may start to persuade you: It’s a video demonstrating a voice activated computer that I put together. The other voice in the video is an AI service on Amazon called Alexa that is “always getting smarter”. Alexa can provide information, such as the wea

The discount rate used to calculate clinical negligence claims has been chopped from 2.5% to -0.75%. A huge change that will cost the NHS c.£1bn extra each year. When a hospital trust is negligent, a payment is made – often as a lump sum to the patient. This might be because a patient contracted MRSA in hospital due to poor hygiene on a ward or fell over and broke their arm. These payments are usually made by the NHS Litigation Authority (NHSLA) who operates a risk pooling sc