As more people than ever are joining wait lists for NHS treatment, appetite for further technology investment to ease pressure on staff and services remains steadfast. However, disillusionment continues to grow among healthcare workers who feel that their calls for innovation have been met with a frustrating number of failed digital transformations. Research released by BT in November found that almost three-quarters of NHS staff feel that new technology roll-outs are failing to integrate with existing systems effectively, limiting their ability to reap the rewards.
The opportunities for technology to improve healthcare services are significant; whether that’s in streamlining communication, driving more efficient, data-led staffing, or enhancing diagnostic accuracy. But despite this potential, health tech implementation is not always so successful. Too often, flashy new health tech apps and solutions are parachuted into the NHS, promising to deliver unparalleled improvements, but failing to deliver in practice. Reasons for this vary, but include implementation without the necessary training and support, a failure to integrate with existing systems, or designs which haven’t been effectively tailored to meet clinicians’ needs.
An overwhelming sense of “app fatigue” among clinicians is the result, with their already busy workloads leaving little time to grapple with clunky or incompatible new technology. According to the BMA, 13.5 million hours of doctors’ time are lost annually due to delays from inadequate or malfunctioning IT systems and equipment. Responsibility lies with us as innovators to address this and rebuild clinicians’ trust in technology and digital transformation by prioritising the following things.
Ensuring technology is tailored to clinicians’ needs from day one
Digital health tools should be custom-built for the specific staff and teams that are destined to use them. Understanding the unique pain points and challenges that frontline clinicians are facing, and the specific context within which the solution will be used, is essential for ensuring that it is tailored effectively.
To do this, tech providers must collaborate closely with NHS leaders and clinicians from day one, ensuring that communication is honest and that feedback can be effectively exchanged throughout every stage of design and implementation. Without ongoing collaboration, solutions can run into a host of difficulties. We’ve seen this play out previously, resulting in solutions which are either too large for leadership to competently implement, or fail to understand end user requirements, incurring costs which ultimately outweigh the benefits as a result.
Partnering and working with a specific NHS organisation to create and build a digital solution can help to guarantee that the end product is genuinely user-friendly and impactful, and as a result, rolled out more successfully on a wider scale.
Prioritising interoperability in design
Interoperability is another crucial priority for ensuring that a solution is able to work in practice within the NHS, simultaneously saving clinicians’ time and enabling collaboration between organisations.
New digital systems must be able to effectively ‘speak’ to other systems already in use. They should increase efficiency by enabling information to be safely and securely shared, reducing the need for additional admin such as manually transferring or re-entering data. With hundreds of different systems in use across the NHS, many of which were first adopted and developed decades ago, this is by no means straightforward. But if healthtech providers fail to consider how their tool will interact with other existing systems, it will inevitably create more challenges than relief for the clinicians using it.
Following the formal introduction of Integrated Care Systems last year, interoperability has also become crucial to enabling wider cross-service collaboration. As innovators, we must consider how our solutions will facilitate this open collaboration between different organisations, as well as within them. For example, when working with our NHS partners to build collaborative staff bank solutions at Patchwork, we have to ensure that this system-wide technology seamlessly integrates with the internal staffing systems used across the organisations involved, in order to break down organisational barriers and support more joined-up ways of delivering care. Otherwise, they cannot sufficiently support ICS-wide working, or be fit for long-term NHS use.
Providing sufficient onboarding and ongoing support to staff
In order to fully capitalise on innovation, clinicians need to be engaged with and feel optimistic about the transformations taking place. NHS staff work tirelessly to provide the highest quality of patient care, and they cannot be expected to spend valuable time trialling new technology which has been parachuted in without adequate onboarding or support. Tech providers must offer comprehensive training as standard which is tailored to clinicians’ specific needs. Whether this involves on-site visits or virtual onboarding sessions to improve flexibility, it has to be adaptable to the busy, high-pressure circumstances in which it is being implemented.
Having the right training and support in place can help to improve staff engagement and confidence in a new solution. And it mustn’t stop post-implementation. Innovators can provide ongoing technical support through regular consultations with end users and the creation of effective feedback channels. This is vital for ensuring that any new tool or system continues to work for and deliver genuine improvements to clinicians and their patients, increasing the chances of it being successfully embraced long-term.
Committing to evolving solutions as healthcare needs change
The tools built for the NHS should be just as flexible as its services and clinicians have to be, adapting to fast-changing healthcare needs and evolving challenges over time. Building technology which is dynamic, and committing to adapting and iterating it further down the line, is critical to ensuring a solution’s longevity and delivering genuine improvements which stand the test of time.
Two things are essential for achieving this: feedback and data. Maintaining regular, open communication with the clinicians using your solution will help you to collect meaningful feedback and stay abreast of their changing needs. Many digital health tools will also generate a wealth of data, which if harnessed successfully can give valuable insights into how a tool is being used, what real-time results it is delivering and where any potential pain points lie that threaten to undermine its impact. Listening to these and adapting your solution accordingly will ensure that it remains effective and continues to serve the clinicians and patients it has been built to support.
Changing the pace of innovation in the NHS is not simply about increasing the number of new solutions being presented; it’s about how these are being delivered in practice. When NHS staff have negative experiences with new technology, it understandably dampens their appetite for innovation. To ease the “app fatigue” being experienced, and reignite confidence in digital health transformation, innovators must take responsibility and commit to designing solutions that are truly tailored, interoperable, adaptable and implemented with care.
Dr Anas Nader, Founder and CEO of Patchwork Health
