George Eliot Hospital NHS Trust has implemented Alfresco Software’s electronic content management solution to speed up patient referrals.

Alfresco’s Digital Business Platform allows patient information to be entered directly onto a computer or mobile device, meaning forms and referrals can be submitted instantly.

By digitising clinical and non-clinical forms, the trust is able to make creation and changes quickly and more easily.

Following its implementation four months ago, there are now plans to expand the use of the Alfresco Digital Business Platform to digitise more processes at George Eliot Hospital.

Stuart Sidebottom, IT project manager for George Eliot Hospital NHS Trust, said: “Alfresco has been very well received and all of the responses have been positive. It has been very beneficial for us.

“It works, it’s quicker, and people are happy with it. Alfresco is able to process our paper forms and make them electronic and ultimately streamline the process to get better outcomes for our patients.”

George Eliot Hospital NHS Trust provides a wide range of hospital and community-based services to Nuneaton, Warwickshire, Leicestershire and Coventry.

The hospital, which opened in 1948, provides accident and emergency services, elective and non-elective surgical services, as well as a host of women’s, children’s, diagnostic, and therapeutic services to over 300,000 patients.

The trust needed a solution that was quick to implement, easy to use, and would gain buy-in from both clinicians and administrative teams to ensure adoption, in line with its ambition of becoming a paperless trust.

Kaur Sehmbi, analyst programmer on the trust’s systems development and integration team, said: “Before Alfresco, making a change to one form associated with a process would typically require us to go back to all forms and make changes on them to ensure consistency.

“By implementing the Alfresco Digital Business platform, this process is made considerably easier because it provides a central form library that can be referenced by multiple processes.

“Feedback has been very positive.”