ANCILE Solutions is bringing its content creation and in-app learning tool, uPerform, to the UK health sector to support NHS organisations with the deployment and adoption of major IT systems.
ANCILE Solutions already delivers uPerform to 4,600 global customers, who use it to train and support users on 200 of the world’s leading business and healthcare applications.
The move into UK healthcare will offer NHS organisations a fast and effective way to train and support staff on electronic patient record and other clinical systems; and to make sure that new and locum staff can use installed technology safely and effectively.
Johnathan Pascall, EMEA sales director for ANCILE Solutions, said: “We know that up to 70% of the success of an electronic patient record deployment rests on achieving rapid and widespread user adoption1. uPerform can help organisations to secure that adoption by reinforcing training and providing support and tips while users work.
“Once systems are in place, uPerform can also reduce the burden of onboarding and supporting new and temporary users. It gives them access to protocols and knowledge while they do what they want to do; which is spend time with patients.”
ANCILE Solutions is launching uPerform into the UK health sector at a time when it faces significant technology and staffing challenges. A significant number of NHS trusts have yet to roll-out or complete the deployment of electronic patient record systems, while others have yet to optimise their use.
‘Digital doctor’ Professor Robert Wachter, who was commissioned by the UK government to write an influential report on NHS IT, noted that there is a ‘productivity paradox’ that means it takes time for the expected benefits of healthcare IT systems to be delivered.
One reason for the paradox is that it takes time for users to become familiar with new IT systems and to use them to reimagine the work they do. The need to prepare the healthcare workforce for the new world of digital delivery was also addressed recently by Sir Eric Topol in a review for NHS Health Education England.
He argued that the NHS needed to develop a ‘culture of learning’ and new ways to support educators and staff. At the moment, health and care organisations have limited educational resources and wards can find it hard to ‘back fill’ staff time spent on training; making it hard for them to effectively deliver traditional, classroom-based learning.
Pascall said: “Deploying a major healthcare IT system is a major undertaking, and one that uPerform can support by delivering training and knowledge to users, as they need it.
“We know, from talking to NHS trusts, that staff who have been through traditional training sessions may still struggle with them day-to-day, and that this puts huge pressure on help-desks or leads sub-optimal ‘work-arounds’.
“uPerform can cut help-desk calls and make sure that staff are using clinical systems in the way that they should be used. It also reduces the pressure of onboarding new users and helps staff to acquire valuable digital confidence and skills; empowering them to use systems to deliver care in the safest and most effective way possible.”
uPerform is underpinned by a content management platform that can be used to simplify content creation and dissemination, and which has been shown to reduce authoring time by more than 50%2.
It delivers training and support materials to system users via in-app tools, which have been shown to reduce the need for classroom training by up to 70%, cut help-desk calls by a quarter, and improve the efficiency of users by up to 16%2.
