NHS Blood and Transplant are digitally improving the organ offer process – all on the cloud

NHS Blood and Transplant take great pride in being an essential part of the NHS playing their part to make the most of absolutely every donation - from blood and organs, to tissues and stem cells. Maintaining an ‘on time full delivery’ of these vital products to the transplant centres is critical, as their services literally are the difference between life and death.

In this context NHSBT took a common-sense approach to answer the question; Why do we need digital transformation? For them it was to make the current complex organ offering process simpler and safer for all concerned. What they have achieved is simply amazing…

1.   The world’s first digitally enabled heart offering - all on the cloud

2.   A 68% reduction time in human administration activities and touch points from the organ matching and offering process.

3.   The removal of up to 40 process steps.

4.   The organ matching element of the process is down to just 6 seconds from 1/2 hour. Previously the complex rules and calculations where done by NHSBT staff and now they are taken care of by an operational decision management (ODM) system.

5.   Not forgetting – no NHSBT hosting infrastructure required and absolutely secure from any ransomware!

NHSBT achieved this, together with T-Impact, by implementing a cloud based digital business process management capability that removed all redundant steps, and automated any steps previously undertaken by staff. The focus was getting it right, first time, every time, for every patient, as quickly as possible. This in turn enabled them to give confidence and certainty to their transplant centres and quicker decisions to organ suitability.

It is worthwhile to explore what process automation and optimisation means, not just for NHSBT, but for any NHS health care provider who is striving to get it right, first time, every time and in full for every patient.

A typical NHS Trust patient care pathway will involve around 100 plus clinical and administrative tasks and these tasks can happen in different places and at different times. The number of tasks in a care pathway will have a direct affect on the quality of care and the NHS resources consumed to discharge the patient on time and safely back to their home or place of residential care. The Health Foundation state that if every task in a 100 step care pathway is performing at a 95% probability of it being done correctly, this still means that fewer than 6 in 1,000 patients going through that care pathway will receive perfect care.

But let’s think positive and set the health organisation a reasonable digital transformation challenge – if we could improve the quality of each task by just 1% and remove just 10% of the tasks then 25 out of 1,000 patients are receiving perfect care. This represents a fivefold increase in quality or a five-fold decrease in risk. Whichever way you want to look at it, this warrants a business case for change and further exploration of what the market offers in regard to process automation and optimisation.

Indeed, we are all aware of the overhead administration tasks/steps (the majority being manual) that exist today in our places of work that are required to detect and rectify underlying system/process errors. For the NHS this leads to poor patient care which puts them at risk of harm. Not forgetting the health and wellbeing of heath care professionals who are frustrated and demoralised by not being able to give the quality of care they would like.

NHS challenges, systems, and processes are complex and multi-dimensional due to having to ensure resources are available to meet demand over time. So will a digital process automation and optimisation transformation strategy resolve all its problems – no of course not – but as NHSBT has learnt if you apply it to your current biggest constraints you can smash some major obstacles that are between you, better patient care and more motivated staff.

For more information on the world’s first digitally enabled heart transplant, have a look at our video of Ben Hume (Assistant Director for Transplantation Support Services) at NHSBT giving an overview of their digital transformation programme and outcomes achieved: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npxTB8QlKUI

Start your digital process automation and optimisation transformation strategy to improve your business today with www.t-impact.com. T-Impact exists because we hate waste and we cannot stand failure.