Tags: Content Management

SynApps Accelerates Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust’s Digital Transformation

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Integrated Paperless Patient Administration Solution Provides On-Demand Records Access

Hatfield, UK – December 9, 2019 – SynApps Solutions, the content management and process automation company, has transformed document and patient records management for Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust, reducing administration, freeing up space and making access simple.

Across the Trust’s diverse operations, clinicians and administrative support teams process around 3,000 live or new patient records each day and call up a further 250 legacy records from its archives. Before 2016, this activity was paper based, relying on large teams of people to access the correct files in advance of patient appointments and get them to where they needed to be.

To improve efficiency, reliability and the quality and consistency of patient care, and to be able to meet the latest Government and Department of Health requirements around digital patient records management and information security, the Trust needed to modernise its processes and capture and manage patient records and correspondence electronically.

Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust chose SynApps Solutions because it was a proven supplier of integrated healthcare record solutions to the NHS and, as an independent provider, it could tailor its systems to the needs of the Trust and deliver in its required timeframe.

SynApps Solutions deployed Alfresco Content Services, a full-featured electronic content management system, as its digital repository for scanned medical records, where they can be quickly called up by any authorised healthcare provider at the point of need, via the Trust’s in-house Electronic Patient Record (EPR) system.

“Whether it’s a consent form for surgery, notes from a previous outpatient appointment, or trend information about outpatient cases, clinical notes can be called up at the click of a button now,” explains, Liam Kennedy, Deputy chief operating officer, Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust. “The ease of access, and ability to spot trends, means better patient care and patient outcomes, which is our priority. The solution SynApps has provided makes a huge difference.”

Efficiency savings have been substantial too. Closing on-site medical records libraries has freed up valuable space for use as part of the Trust’s investment in research and development, and more than 26 administration staff have been freed up for other work elsewhere across the Trust.

“The new paperless administration solution at Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust is further demonstration of SynApps’ expertise in the UK healthcare sector,” adds James Paton, CEO at SynApps Solutions. “We know how important robust document and records management is and are delighted to make such a positive impact on clinicians and patients alike.”

Read the Case Study here. 

SynApps Transforms West London NHS Trust’s Document & Patient Records Management

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Modern, easy-to-integrate Alfresco system allows NHS Trust to improve search, reporting and more

Hatfield, UK – October 14th, 2019 – SynApps Solutions, the enterprise content management specialist, has overhauled the document and patient records management of West London NHS Trust, improving user access to content, the ability to search and reporting.

SynApps works with a number of organisations in the UK health sector and became involved with West London NHS Trust when it became clear that the Trust’s legacy system for its document and patient records management was not fit for purpose.

Users were unable to search text in the Trust’s millions of documents and individual patient records, making it cumbersome and time-consuming to find documents. Trying to generate basic reporting metrics was clunky and slow at best, and often impossible.

“Access to documents and patient records is critical to the smooth-running of the Trust and our previous system was expensive, slow and starting to cause major issues for us,” said Graham Birrell, central records and EDMS manager, West London NHS Trust. “It was clear we needed to change and we started to look at the options available.”

The Trust had to decide whether to upgrade its existing system or replace it, and it was becoming increasingly clear that a replacement would offer the most potential for providing the more modern and improved experience users needed. It was important to be able to integrate the new system with Rio, the Trust’s patient administration system, as well as increasing accuracy and productivity, and improving overall service delivery.

For enterprise-level content management, Alfresco stood out as the obvious option for the Trust. Not only did it have a modern feel to it, and come with some great APIs, when Alfresco introduced the Trust to its strategic integration partner, SynApps Solutions to implement the new system, the Trust was immediately assured it had made the right decision.

SynApps swiftly demonstrated that Alfresco offered a lot more functionality than before, such as the ability to preview content, drag and drop documents, easily upload files and display folder contents. The whole experience of using the system was much easier, faster and clearer, while it is has also integrated with other systems easily and transformed reporting.

“I have been in the NHS for over 20 years and I can’t sing the praises of SynApps highly enough,” continued Graham Birrell. “They’re extremely responsive, even out of hours – which tends to be when we contact them – even though this isn’t in their contract. They put enormous effort into the preparations and the transition to the new Alfresco system, smoothing the way and doing exactly what they promised.”

West London NHS Trust, formerly West London Mental Health NHS Trust, is one of the most diverse providers of mental and physical healthcare in the UK, providing integrated services across 30 sites. SynApps has a strong track record in working with such health organisations, a result of its ability to understand the specific needs and challenges they are facing, according to spokesperson, job title, SynApps.

“Our work with West London NHS Trust is a further example of the success we have had within the UK health sector. It’s a market we have a deep understanding of, and we know how important document and patient records management can be and the impact they have on service delivery.”

Sandwell & West Birmingham Hospitals Moving To Digital Care With SynApps

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Sandwell & West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust (SWBH) has recently introduced digital content management for its medical records, determined to make sharing medical data easier and more practical. The project is based on content management platform from Alfresco, implemented and project managed by SynApps Solutions.

SWBH is a busy, multi-site NHS entity. In the past financial year alone, it handled 199,437 attendances at A&E, 650,000 community contacts and 526,945 out-patient appointments. Clearly, information and its correct routing matter a great deal at SWBH. To put that in context: in the month of January 2017, the Trust moved no fewer than 35,000 individual patient records around teams internally. The problem: those documents were moved by four-wheeled trolleys – not digitally.

For The Trust’s chief informatics officer, Mark Reynolds, the motivation behind the digital content management project is clear – it’s all about  “helping make information sharing a lot smoother”.

It’s early days at SWBH for this new way of working – but Reynolds adds, “In terms of what clinicians do, the benefit is very marked with those 35,000 records move around electronically, not manually, finally.”

Read our full blog on this great SynApps NHS success here

Sandwell & West Birmingham Hospitals Move To EPR And Digital Working


 

 

 

Sandwell & West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust (SWBH) has recently embarked on a significant digital transformation project

The aim in healthcare is for patient care to be provided seamlessly and with continuity across any combination of service providers – from acute and mental health Trusts to community GP practices and pop-up clinics all the way out to caregivers out in the field.

Sandwell & West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust (SWBH) is a busy, multi-site organisation. In the past financial year alone, it handled 199,437 attendances at A&E, 650,000 community contacts and 526,945 out-patient appointments. Clearly, information and its correct routing matters a great deal at SWBH. To put that in context: in the month of January 2017 alone, the Trust moved no fewer than 35,000 individual patient records around the institution.

SWBH has recently introduced a digital content management approach to medical records, aiming to make sharing medical data easier and more practical. The approach uses a content management platform from Alfresco, while being implemented and project managed by SynApps Solutions.

The Trust’s chief informatics officer, Mark Reynolds, explains some of the motivation behind the project. “We’re helping make information sharing a lot smoother via a set of changes that will eventually get us to a full EPR (electronic patient record). That’s going to happen in 2018, and it will set us up for the opening of new facilities the year after. However, what we are currently engaged in is a move to an increasingly paperless way of working to help build the foundations for that future.”

The trust is currently digitising the new documents that come through its doors. “This isn’t a project about making all of our archives paperless, but a way to make the Trust more nimble and EPR-ready,” adds Reynolds.

Advantages of this approach include valuable early benefits – freeing up office space on its sites as paper storage starts to become less important. SWBH is also able to redeploy some of its admin staff who would have been tending all that paper.

To achieve this, SWBH decided on a very pragmatic Open Source approach. This brings advantages in terms of commitment – such freeware can be adopted on a zero-cost basis with a view to a bigger commitment when commercially viable. The Trust also wanted to only work with a supplier who had sold into the NHS, and so would understand its issues and not need any hand-holding.

The Alfresco content management system to manage digital content, implemented by SynApps, met those criteria, and SWBH was happy to start the records digitisation project with those partners.

The right decision

It’s early days at SWBH for this new way of working. “Although our case note scanning project was not without its difficulties, we are now at a stable state where digital documents are the norm and not the exception. It’s a good lead-in for our new EPR as staff are becoming more accustomed to digital case notes.”

“In terms of what clinicians do, the benefit is very marked – those 35,000 records move around electronically, not on trolleys, finally.”

In terms of addressing our information archives, Reynolds sees that as a longer-term project that can be progressed in partnership with the Trust’s records supplier. “We decided that the best use of our resources was on the new medical documentation and getting that digitised first – and I think our results show that this was the right approach.”

The author is Chief Informatics Officer at Sandwell & West Birmingham Hospitals (SWBH) NHS Trust

SynApps Solutions To Exhibit At Alfresco Day London 2017

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Content management leader invited to be a key participant at major technology partner customer conference   

Maidenhead, UK, 27 November, 2017 – Content management leader SynApps Solutions is delighted to announce it will be exhibiting at a special one-day event hosted by key technology partner Alfresco.

The customer and partner one-day conference, Alfresco Day London 2017, will be held at the Royal Garden Hotel, Kensington W8 4PT on Thursday, 7th December 2017, 8.30am – 6.30pm.

As its guiding themes, Alfresco Day London 2017 will look at how organisations can deliver a seamless digital experience for their markets and practical guidance on how to leverage the Alfresco platform to get there.

To that end, Alfresco and other participants will explore how delegates can:

  • Regain control of critical business content
  • Strengthen compliance
  • Optimise processes and
  • Gain competitive edge.

Attendees will also hear how Alfresco will work with Amazon Web Services™ (AWS) combining mobile collaboration, capabilities, and ubiquitous file access with the security, control, and policy enforcement that enterprises need.

They will also hear how the supplier plans to integrate Amazon’s Alexa speech recognition front end to integrate content and process, using smart assistant tech to transform interactions.

“As one of the foremost UK suppliers in the UK for the Alfresco ecosystem, we are delighted to be invited to Alfresco Day London 2017,” said SynApps Solutions’ joint Managing Director and Sales & Marketing Director, Mark Winstone.

SynApps will use the opportunity to speak with Alfresco customers about its proven delivery and service expertise for Alfresco ECM, providing organisations a fast path to help users interact with information.

“Alfresco Day London 2017 promises to be an excellent forum to engage in detailed discussion with digital technology pioneers and experts, as well as meet with customers and network with peers in the enterprise content management industry,” he added.

Please join us at SynApps’s stand to find out more.

To secure your free place as an ECM professional at Alfresco Day London 2017, please click here

SynApps Lays Out A Vision Of A Fully Digital Police Process

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In a recent blog article, SynApps revealed another exciting solution for the public sector it’s working on with its customers – this time, in law enforcement.

The Police are always watching the clock when they get a suspect to the station, and it’s a clock that can’t be bargained with, either. As the hit Channel 4 show has shown us, 24 hours (longer if it’s a serious crime or a terrorist act) sounds like a long time, but just isn’t; the race us on to get a case assembled, witnesses and suspect interviewed, liaison with the CPS has to happen, and so on.

What’s more, as digital evidence is becoming more and more central to modern law enforcement, the sector’s entering the era of even more CCTV, body-worn cameras on officers, evidence gathered by iPhone or digital camera, and so forth.

As a result, the company foresees, the sector’s going to have to find ways to properly manage, store and, crucially, search and properly label and timestamp, such digital evidence. Which is where modern content management comes in, in the shape of what SynApps and our tech partners can offer. That’s because ECM is the missing link in digital evidence management in terms of what’s needed to capture, move, search, store and systematically archive such important material – and achieve the fully joined up digital justice system the Crown, public and Police themselves know we all need.

Read the longer version of this vision here

SynApps’ Top Five Tips For Project Success

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29 February 2016 – the head of professional services for ECM leader SynApps Solutions’ James Paton outlines five things he always insists on from his team when they go out to work with any customer.

Proper Project Analysis

Scoping is about confirming what your expectations are as our new customer. We need to probe and really find out what areas of risk there might be that you might not have thought about. We also need to give you options for possible amelioration of these issues, if we find any.

The Right Approach

We are flexible and multi-skilled and never apply one way of working to all our work, so for some things traditional waterfall is best, for others it’s Agile. Central to picking the method is working with you to understand what you’re comfortable with. Once we have defined our methodology, the next element is what the costs are of doing a particular project.

Putting It All In The Best Way

Then it comes to delivery, the biggest factor is having experienced people. We’ve got that – staff with many years’ experience in enterprise content management and ECM heavy-lifting. Plus, our resources are all UK-based, so we can respond to clients instantly.

A Real Partnership

We take a partner approach with our clients. If there is something problematic we need you to be aware of, we insist on telling you straight.

Avoiding The Curse Of The Creeps

Project creep? Horrible – and, perhaps contrary to expectations, it’s not good for your implementation partner if it drags on, because that means we can’t redeploy our people to another engagement. So we both need to define what the finish line is – and what delivery really means.

That’s it – following these five things will deliver the results any client of ours deserves in project success.

Read James’s full blog post for yourself here