Awards for some of the UK’s most outstanding health IT projects and people were announced at the gala BT e-Health Awards ceremony in London last night.
The black tie dinner and ceremony brought together representatives from all quarters of the healthcare IT community to celebrate the winners’ and finalists’ achievements. The six award categories attracted over 80 entries while over 1,000 online votes were cast for the Healthcare ICT Champion of the Year award.
The overall sponsors of the awards were BT Health, with Dr Glyn Hayes, former chair of the British Computer Society Health Informatics Forum acting as chair of the judging panel. The master of ceremonies for the evening was GP and broadcaster, Dr Phil Hammond.
Speaking at the event, BT’s Sir Jonathan Michael said: “This year’s entries covered a wide range of success stories, providing real life examples of how clinicians, mangers and IT professionals up and down the country are working together to make a difference to the lives of both healthcare staff and patients, as well as improving the quality and efficiency of services provided by healthcare organisations.”
After a champagne reception sponsored by Emis, the winners were announced:
Healthcare Business Support ICT Team of the Year
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The Healthcare Business Support ICT Team of the Year, a category sponsored by Voice Power, was won by Trafford Healthcare NHS Trust’s IM&T team and suppliers Msoft for a blood-tracking solution, which has achieved complete tracking and traceability of all blood products used by the trust.
The judges were impressed not only by the system itself but by the fact that it was very effectively integrated into other hospital systems.
The runners up were: Health Solutions Wales, for the Cascade content management system now used by 350 NHS Wales organisations to manage their online information and the IM&T team from Birmingham East and North PCT, for their approach to implementing new Connecting for Health systems.
Primary Care ICT Team of the Year
The winner of the Primary Care ICT Team of the Year, a category sponsored by NHS Connecting for Health, was the NHS Tayside Health Informatics Team for a wide range of achievements but specifically for creating an integrated data communications network based on the use of a Community Health Index (CHI) number linking individual health records across the Tayside region.
Runners up in the category were: Liverpool PCT, for its implementation of a system from Clinical Solutions which supports the management of patients and resources across four walk-in centres in Liverpool; and North Staffordshire Health Intelligence Service Programme Team which has worked with partners Emis, DigiTV and Stoke-on-Trent City Council to introduce a service that enables patients to book and cancel GP appointments via their digital televisions.
Community and Mental Health ICT Team of the Year
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The winner of Community and Mental Health ICT Team of the Year, sponsored by McKesson, was Tower Hamlets Care Community, for the implementation of the NHS London Programme for IT electronic Single Assessment Process (e-SAP) solution in the Tower Hamlets Care Community (Acute, Mental Health, Primary Care and Social Care), with the involvement of the Tower Hamlets Older People’s Reference Group.
Runners up in the category were: Central Surrey Health, where senior nurses have been using a telemedicine solution from AxSys Technology to improve the care of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, leading to a 40% reduction in hospital admissions; and York Deaf Child and Family Service which has introduced video conferencing and other technologies to improve access to mental health services for deaf young people and their families.
Excellence in Health Information Management
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The winner of the Excellence in Health Information Management, sponsored by Quicksilva, was Homerton University Hospital NHS Trust, for its introduction of Dr Foster Intelligence’s Patient Experience Tracker tool to gather patient opinion on hospital care.
The judges were impressed that the system used to record patients’ views about their care yielded such rich information and that staff had made a commitment to act on the results.
Runners up in the category were Newham PCT, for developing an innovative programme with Serco which enables community matrons to identify patients at increased risk of hospitalisation and intervene to offer them additional support and care; and supplier Cyres, for its development of a tool has transformed the way laboratories report and submit their data to the NHS Cervical Screening Programme.
Acute Care ICT Team of the Year
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The winner of the Acute Care ICT Team of the Year, also sponsored by NHS Connecting for Health, was Countess of Chester Hospital ICT Team for a swathe of advanced initiatives at their busy acute hospital, including a fully integrated patient care system which is fast becoming a complete electronic record at the hospital and works at the heart of GP and community links.
The judges said “If you had to manage a busy acute hospital, one of the best moves you could make would be to get IM&T director Phil Davies and his team in to run the IM&T service.”
Runners up in the category were: Golden Jubilee National Hospital, Clydebank, for its automated telephone system devised by AxSys Technology to keep in contact with patients and detect any post-operative problems; Shrewsbury and Telford Hospitals NHS Trust, for its development of the eScript electronic transcribing system which enables an electronic record to be created on admission to hospital and updated throughout the patient’s stay.
E-Health Insider Readers’ Award for Healthcare ICT Champion of the Year
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Finally, the E-Health Insider Readers’ Award for Healthcare ICT Champion of the Year, sponsored by Microsoft, was won Dr Mike Bainbridge clinical architect, NHS Connecting for Health. He received 302 out of the 1025 votes cast online by E-Health Insider readers.
Runners up in the readers’ award were Sean Brennan, writer and consultant, author of "The NHS IT Project: the biggest computer programme in the world… ever!"; Ian Fenton, head of IT and leader of the NHS Tayside ICT team; Dr Amir Hannan, GP and advocate of patient access to medical records; Ben Howison, ICT technical lead for data migration, Barts and The London NHS Trust; and Professor Brian Randell, organiser of the www.nhs-it.info wiki and member of the ‘NHS 23’ group of academics.