NHS Lanarkshire creates analytics apps

NHS Lanarkshire has launched a range of analytics applications to give staff easier access to data.

The Scottish health board has developed the dashboards together with MicroStrategy to provide access to systems data about a range of departments across its three hospitals.

Alan Lawrie, the health board’s director of acute services, told EHI the applications interface with the board’s “relatively robust” clinical systems to provide easily viewable data to clinicians.

“With [the applications], we can get it easily rather than having to delve into the deeper, darker parts of the system.

“If you’re a busy doctor or nurse, you can sit in front of your computer and take a look with a couple of clicks.”

Lawrie said one of the applications is a module displaying real-time data from the hospitals’ emergency departments, allowing staff to adjust their focus as necessary.

“You can get a feel for what the heat of the department is and what’s happening on an hour-by-hour basis, right in front of you and in a very visual way.”

The board also has a suite of dashboards with planned care information like inpatient and outpatient bookings to help meet treatment targets, as well as a bed-management dashboard to show in real time how many beds are available in each ward and each hospital.

Lawrie said a ward dashboard with information from the previous month, such as staff sickness levels, complaints and compliments, provides senior charge nurses and ward teams with information about the quality of care.

The applications can be accessed by desktops, laptops and other mobile devices that are linked into the board’s network.

He said the applications have a “modest” cost, with a budget of about £100,000 for the A&E dashboard, while adding value to the existing systems.

“They’re an add-on, rather than duplicating what’s already there.”

Lawrie said the board started work on the emergency dashboard in 2012 before it went live in August 2013, and has received positive feedback from clinicians.

He said the board is planning to make the ward dashboard “a little more real-time” to improve the timeliness of the information.

One of its other major IT projects is its e-casenote electronic patient note project, which Lawrie said is part of the move towards a paperless system over the next 18 months.

Lawrie said the board is starting to back-scan a significant number of historical records and documents to be displayed within its clinical portal, which already includes data from some clinical systems.

The scanning includes basic optical character recognition to allow some search facilities, while the scanned documents will be placed in different sections for test results, correspondence and other categories.

Lawrie said the electronic clinical notes will go live at Hairmyres Hospital at the end of June, with the next phase of the project focused on moving information from GP systems into the portal.