Kiosk trial for Friends and Family Test

Queen Victoria Hospital NHS Foundation Trust is piloting the use of self check-in kiosks and other touch screen devices to do the Friends and Family Test.

The trust’s operational service improvement lead Stephanie Joice said the trust is working with kiosk provider Jayex on the use of different devices to gather patient feedback.

“It’s about giving patients as many different opportunities to provide feedback to us as possible,” she said.

The pilot starts in late autumn and will trial which devices are best for different areas of the hospital with a final solution expected to be in place by next April.

Queen Victoria is also looking to develop a patient portal with Jayex that people could visit before or after their appointment to check their data, see information related to their condition and complete the Friends and Family survey.

“We have the funding agreed for it and it’s in development stage. There’s so much functionality available so it’s about prioritising where we want to start,” she explained.

Joice said the trust installed the  kiosks at the start of 2012 and is now looking to optimise their use in a number of areas.

Reporting from the check-in software is helping the trust understand why certain clinics are bottle-necking or not running smoothly at specific times, leading to a redesign of how clinics are booked and how templates are structured.

Jayex Technology said its kiosks are the first to achieve Interoperability Toolkit accreditation using InterSystem’s Ensemble integration engine.

Head of secondary care, Vik Parekh, said the company’s goal is for all customers to migrate to ITK.

Some trusts are already using ITK standard messaging to interact directly with their patient administration systems, allowing patients to update their demographic details.

At Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, between 70-90% of patients are using the kiosks and 70% are changing demographic details, he said.

Trusts have also found that patients are more willing to give certain information, such as ethnicity, using a kiosk rather than in person.