Author Archives: Sara Paine

Improve Local NHS IT Fast – Get Rid Of the Legacy

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By Tony Backhouse, Business Development Manager – Healthcare Division, SynApps Solutions

I want to take the opportunity with this blog to talk a bit more about the challenges that NHS customers have been telling us about – the kinds of challenges that have led us at SynApps Solutions to build not just our established VNA PACS platform but also our new Clinical Content Store (CCS) (see ‘Saving the NHS – Let’s Start with Local Health IT’)

What we are hearing from NHS Trust leaders can be summed up under the following headings, I think:

What to do with all the old data: the NHS legacy system challenge

Hospitals maintain a large number of systems for managing patient records and associated information. The problem: a lot of these systems have become “Read Only” or obsolete or are to be consolidated and replaced by newer technology. At the same time, they also have a lot of in-house applications that have accumulated large volumes of data and/or documentation over the years. And while a lot of this information is no longer ”Active”, it needs to be maintained, which can be costly. Meanwhile, in most cases, unfortunately, the performance of these systems is getting worse over time.

If they could, Trusts would like de-commission these systems so as to save the costs of all the associated software licences, servers, storage, and ongoing maintenance and administration these legacy systems represent. Especially, for all the multiple back up and archiving routines. But as I said, the data in these systems is still important and needs to be preserved. In fact, gaining access to this information in a patient-centric manner, whether across the hospital or externally across the patient journey is seen as something that will add significant value in the kind of new NHS its Chief Executive, Simon Stevens, envisages.

But first, we need to do some work on that mass of information that’s built up. We know that some of it we need to keep, for compliance reasons, meaning it cannot be deleted or altered. And it must be auditable, and readily available when asked for.

Well, the good news here is that the Clinical Content Store we have just built will let you work very effectively with that information, letting you easily retire, retrieve and in general, better manage inactive clinical application data and documents in a central, scalable, non-proprietary, compliant archive. Just some of the ways it does that is by a powerful, Web-based interface that enables search of data from decommissioned applications, even as far as cross-application searching via a single portal to view the information. Another feature is the way we can guarantee you a full audit, ensuring that the data is not tampered with and there is an unbroken ‘chain of custody’ from the point of data extraction to future usage.

All this capability means that we know the CCS can handle a big part of the admin load of the Trust. But that’s not all it can do, nor is it the only problem it was set up to tackle. Take another:

The data burden from your current, operational IT

You will also, of course, be running core, strategic systems that support the day-to-day running of your Trust – which tend to run on high-end servers, associated with high-cost storage platforms and which tend to be buttressed by expensive backup systems and configured for high availability and disaster recovery.

All of this costs – and as the volume of data being generated and managed by these systems grows, so does that cost. You will know that without effective management of such a stack, data application performance degrades, backups cannot be completed in available windows, additional software licences are required and upgrading applications becomes extremely difficult and time consuming. So you will have invested in archiving, 99% of which are point solutions addressing a particular system or data type – and whose use results in the creation of an increased number of information silos, which has just added to that legacy system and data problem we were just talking about.

What would be better? How about a unified archive platform, capable of ingesting and managing any type of data or content, structured or unstructured, on a low cost compliant infrastructure? A platform that also has a central archive that means your patients’ clinical data from legacy applications can be made available, so medical users have access to the information they need but admin people also have their needs met so as to serve the whole Trust’s business and compliance requirements. And what if that information can be shared using internationally recognized standards such as XDS?

If you had such a system, those legacy ones could be switched off, removing a huge chunk of support and maintenance costs. And as you retire old systems, you start to provide greater data availability for structured and unstructured data, as well as requiring less storage to accommodate the data. You can also stop paying unneeded application and database licenses and you will be able to reduce costs for backup, restore, and upgrades and cut down on all your data centre costs by removing solid servers that consume power, space and server support charges. The list goes on!

And that’s the list of what the Clinical Content Store can do. What’s better, we conservatively estimate that Trusts can bank on a data and storage bill of something like 60-70% less of what it would have been if you had kept it in your main operational system.

Putting all this together, it’s clear that the only real way to get on top of the data problem is to look for technology that works the way the CCS does.

Or even better, cut to the chase and use the proper Store itself!

We are currently offering a free consultative study to scope out the potential of CCS to meet your need, but be aware it is time-limited – so start talking to us today!

Please – take advantage of our seminar [https://www.synapps-solutions.com/events/addressing-the-twin-challenges-of-retiring-applications-while-increasing-access-to-patient-information] on Thursday 29th January at 12.30pm at the London Chamber of Commerce, EC4R 1AR, and find out more about the Clinical Content Store and how it can help you meet your EPR challenge.

 

SynApps To Host ‘Switching off Legacy Applications The Reality in Practice’ Event on 29 January 2015

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Join fellow Healthcare and IT practitioners for this FREE event that offers practical advice and guidance on retiring legacy applications and reducing IT costs. The event will: 

  • Explain how to turn around the 80:20 rule in your favour. 80% of Trusts’ application running costs is for information that doesn’t change and is rarely or never accessed
  • Outline how to retire Legacy and Read-Only applications whilst retaining access to that information at a vastly reduced cost
  • Demonstrably pave the way for ‘next generation’ patient information platforms
  • Practically outline the governance capability for the storage, access & retention of the data across all clinical systems in a simple and easy to manage application

Event Details

  • Time: 12:30 – 17:00Venue: London Chamber of Commerce,
    33 Queen Street,
    London, EC4R 1AP

To find out more and to register, please visit: https://www.synapps-solutions.com/events/addressing-the-twin-challenges-of-retiring-applications-while-increasing-access-to-patient-information

 

 

SynApps To Host ‘Switching off Legacy Applications The Reality in Practice’ Event on 29 January 2015


Join fellow Healthcare and IT practitioners for this FREE event that offers practical advice and guidance on retiring legacy applications and reducing IT costs. The event will:

  • Explain how to turn around the 80:20 rule in your favour. 80% of Trusts’ application running costs is for information that doesn’t change and is rarely or never accessed
  • Outline how to retire Legacy and Read-Only applications whilst retaining access to that information at a vastly reduced cost
  • Demonstrably pave the way for ‘next generation’ patient information platforms
  • Practically outline the governance capability for the storage, access & retention of the data across all clinical systems in a simple and easy to manage application

Event Details

  • Time: 12:30 – 17:00
  • Venue: London Chamber of Commerce,
    33 Queen Street,
    London, EC4R 1AP

To find out more and to register, please visit: https://www.synapps-solutions.com/events/addressing-the-twin-challenges-of-retiring-applications-while-increasing-access-to-patient-information

 

‘Making CRD-IV Compliance an ‘Automated’ Process’

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by Mark Winstone, Sales and Marketing Director, SynApps Solutions

As anyone in the European financial services sector will know, the European Banking Agency (EBA) (http://www.eba.europa.eu) is pressing for a uniform reporting structure to help it better track banks’ underlying financial strength.

To read the full article, please visit: http://www.creditcontrol.co.uk/Index%20Content/Making%20CRD-IV%20Compliance.pdf

Saving the NHS – Let’s Start with Local Health IT

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By Tony Backhouse, Business Development Manager – Healthcare Division, SynApps Solutions

“It is perfectly possible to improve and sustain the NHS over the next five years in a way that the public and patients want.

“But to secure the future that we know is possible, the NHS needs to change substantially.”

These are the words of no less a figure than Simon Stevens – head of NHS England, so very much a figure whose ideas on the best ways to take the health service forward we need to listen to.

Stevens made the statement as part of his landmark October ‘Five Year Forward View’ vision for what the NHS has to do to survive.

Note my emphasis. Not ‘would like to do.’ Not ‘is asking the taxpayer nicely for.’

No, Stevens said ‘needs to do’ – in order to survive.

The document lays out many different policy, social, structural and indeed cultural changes that, not just the NHS as an organization, but we as users of it need to start making – from looking after our health better to that long-awaited health and social care integration we have been hearing about for so long finally kicking off.

But Stevens is also famous for being an NHS leader with not just real knowledge of ICT, but a deep conviction of its central place in the revolution he wants to spark in the British healthcare system (“We will invest in new options for our workforce, and raise our game on health technology… unless we reshape care delivery, harness technology, and drive down variations in quality and safety of care, then patients’ changing needs will go unmet” being just two of the many remarks he makes on the topic in the Five Year Forward View).

Well, we’ve all heard similar statements before. Many of you reading this will have some experience with the National Programme for IT (NPfIT), to name the most notorious example of what can happen when ambitious, top-down technology-led change is imposed on the NHS. (The NPfIT was an initiative by the Department of Health in England to move the NHS in England towards a single, centrally-mandated electronic care record for patients and to connect 30,000 GPs to 300 hospitals, providing secure and audited access to these records by authorised health professionals.)

I use the word ‘imposed’ deliberately. Stevens in this document lays out what happened before when Whitehall says what Trusts need to do without taking enough consideration of their specific needs.

But this time, he says, it’s going to be different. Which is where technologies such as those being developed by SynApps Solutions are going to really start helping you.

The Clinical Content Store: a major SynApps development

What do I mean? Stevens, acknowledging the issues that have plagued attempts at getting more tech into the NHS before, makes a very significant statement that I want to draw your attention to: “Nationally we will focus on the key systems that provide the ‘electronic glue’ that enables different parts of the health service to work together. Other systems will be for the local NHS to decide upon and procure.”

In other words, we (NHS England) will put some systems out there for you – but the rest, the ones that you know work and can source and implement the way that makes sense for your hospital, is down to you. How can local IT do this? They need to strip out old IT and use those savings to part fund the right systems that will share information in the right way. Step forward, just such a system –the SynApps Clinical Content Store.

You will be aware that SynApps, working with key partners like EMC, has been building a great system for helping Trusts start to better manage complex, large image files, which they needed to do as the old National Programme central radiology contracts started to wind down. This is our VNA, Vendor Neutral Archive (see, for example, our blogs on here from last year like ‘WHY DOES VNA MATTER – AND HOW DO YOU IDENTIFY IT?’ and ‘‘ROYAL’ APPROVAL FOR A VNA-BASED EPR?’).

The VNA has been doing some fantastic work out there. But we haven’t been sitting on our laurels – far from it. Instead, we have been building out the VNA and adding other functionality to it to create this new CCS, or Clinical Content Store – a place to bring together all kinds of information at the local level to help create a true Electronic Patient Record, from the bones of all the old systems and alongside the new. A place to start building powerful, flexible ways to not just ‘go paperless’ but to, at last, integrate the structured and unstructured digital and non-digital patient data needed.

In the next couple of blogs, I’m going to tell you about the CCS, why it matters, how we see it starting to help organisations just like yours. We will also talk to this important theme of ‘national glue’ provided by NHS IT systems buttressed by flexible, local systems.

I think it’s going to be a fantastic journey. But it’s also hard to think of a more important IT project: one that means you will play a core role in the saving of the NHS.

Are you on board?

Tony joined SynApps in April (https://www.synapps-solutions.com/tag/recruitment) to help further build our success in this sector

We are currently offering a free consultative study to scope out the potential of CCS to meet your need, but be aware it is time-limited – so start talking to us today!

Please – take advantage of the seminar [https://www.synapps-solutions.com/events/addressing-the-twin-challenges-of-retiring-applications-while-increasing-access-to-patient-information] on Thursday 29th January at 12.30pm at the London Chamber of Commerce, EC4R 1AR, and find out more about the Clinical Content Store and how it can help you meet your EPR challenge.

 

SynApps Launches The Clinical Content Store – An Image-Enabled, Information-Rich Electronic Patient Record


UK healthcare providers can finally move beyond the traditional EPR, combining the best of new and old in one central, secure and easily searchable repository

 Maidenhead, UK – December 15, 2014 – SynApps Solutions, the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solutions leader, has launched the Clinical Content Store (CCS), a next-generation data management system for digital patient record keeping.

The Store can hold all of a hospital’s medical images, including medical photography, as well as a wide range of other vital patient information too often locked away in niche departmental systems or in a read-only legacy system formats, as well as all the unstructured data that a true EPR (electronic patient record) demands.

The Store will also improve the sharing of information across the whole care pathway in or out of the hospital, a task made more challenging by the large number of hospital IT or PACS systems in the NHS that are too complex and expensive to maintain and which serve to place limits on viewing and sharing information.

The Store also comes on-stream at a time when former National Programme for IT (NPfIT) radiology and PACS outsourcing contracts finally wind down, forcing Chief Clinical Information Officers to find new image storage solutions in a context of financial constraint. A proven response to these challenges is the consolidation of PACS silos into one Vendor Neutral Archive (VNA), which is at the heart of the new SynApps product, but the Clinical Content Store is also a powerful data repository for all clinical and patient data, both structured and unstructured.

“We’re excited about Clinical Content Store as early customers in the NHS tell us it’s a fantastic place to start building powerful consolidated data repositories for all clinical and patient data,” commented Tony Backhouse, Business Development Manager – Healthcare Division for the company.

“These NHS customers also tell us they’re seeing a 70% reduction in the costs of keeping all their data in multiple systems when they’ve started using the CCS, with one institution already estimating is going to save at least £1m per annum by not having to directly work with legacy systems anymore,” added Backhouse.

Please – take advantage of the seminar [https://www.synapps-solutions.com/events/addressing-the-twin-challenges-of-retiring-applications-while-increasing-access-to-patient-information] onThursday 29th January at 12.30pm at the London Chamber of Commerce, EC4R 1AR, and find out more about the Clinical Content Store and how it can help you meet your EPR challenge.

About SynApps

SynApps is an independent services and solutions company specialising in Enterprise Content Management (ECM) technologies. Founded in 2003 by former Documentum services professionals, SynApps provides consultancy, implementation and support services for EMC Documentum and Alfresco, and has authored a suite of content integration solutions, ConXApps, that allow businesses to quickly maximise their investment in ECM technologies.

Organisations across healthcare, government and commercial markets rely on SynApps solutions and services to capture and share knowledge more dynamically and efficiently.

Find out more at synapps-solutions.com, or follow us on Twitter @Synappssol

 

The Ward Camera Can Be Seen As Friend Not Foe Of The NHS Paperless Strategy

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mark winstoneMark Winstone, Sales and Marketing Director at SynApps Solutions, the content management solutions specialist, looks at how technology is helping the NHS with the major challenge of photography management.

The use of photo documentation in hospitals is nothing new in areas such as wound care, for example.  A picture as they say can be worth a thousand words. Similarly, even the most experienced doctor or nurse may not be able to describe a wound with the same accuracy as an image. But with the arrival of digital photography, many in-house photography teams have had the curtain dropped on them.

To read the full article, please visit: http://24n.biz/features/the-ward-camera-can-be-seen-as-friend-not-foe-of-the-nhs-s-paperless-strategy.html