Electronic document management system helps Royal Marsden become truly paper-free

The Royal Marsden’s rapid diagnostic and assessment centre is intended to speed up diagnosis for patients with suspected cancer, carrying out a range of tests on the same day and involving a large multidisciplinary team – and, traditionally, an awful lot of paper.

It meant that when the specialist cancer trust introduced an electronic document management system, the clinic was a natural place to start rollout. Electronic forms were developed within the system – Hyland’s OnBase – enabling paper-free management of every step of the process.

“It was really well received in the organisation and reduced administrative time, speeding up getting that documentation available,” reports Lisa Emery, the trust’s CIO. “Then we included a link from our in-house electronic patient record, to seamlessly launch that documentation into the Hyland OnBase product.”

The success was such that the approach is being extended into other areas. “Now we’ve got that confidence and built that work with Hyland, we’re branching out into things like medical photography, into looking at documentation for clinical trials, all sorts of really paper-intensive areas of the trust where we can really help our clinicians and our administrative staff out.”

In recent weeks, that has included processes to monitor patients who have symptoms of Covid-19. Rapid development of e-forms will mean that patients can remotely complete a symptom checker form before any planned appointment. If their responses are indicative of possible Covid, then a consultation will take place by phone or video – avoiding the need for a hospital visit and possible cross-infection.

“We’re now really getting traction with what we’re doing with the product,” reports Emery.

To find out more about Royal Marsden’s implementation of OneBase, click below.