In the past year we have seen a lot of change to how we work. None more so that the NHS; how do you continue to treat other patients when the entire hospital is struggling to cope with a global pandemic?
Remote Consultations
The first way was to move towards remote consultations. In many cases this was more procedural than technology driven. The telephone could be used to contact patients without the need to bring potentially vulnerable patients into the hospital. The great thing about the telephone is that everyone has one so this did not require any rollout of equipment to achieve.
But what if you needed to do a visual assessment of the patient? This is where we needed a proven solution that was easy for the Trust and more importantly the patient to use. Attend Anywhere had a proven track record with NHS Scotland successfully using it already to care for a geographically dispersed user base. The question now was how did we get enough headsets and cameras out to our clinicians to use this effectively? This proved to be an immense challenge as the demand worldwide for these peripherals was far outweighing demand. Luckily the suppliers were prioritising healthcare organisations.
Multi-Disciplinary Team Meetings (MDT)
Whenever there is a cancer diagnosis within the NHS it is reviewed in an MDT. These are usually large meetings of consultants who discuss the case and agree a diagnosis. These have historically been facilitated by Video Conferencing solutions; however, these were large room to room systems that were not mobile and Agile. Luckily DEC were already in the process of rolling out Microsoft 365 to an Acute Trust and we were able to facilitate these meetings using Teams.
Now the world is changing again, and people are wanting to be back onsite but also work remotely. The challenge was laid down as to how we merged the old world with the new. Working with a third-party communications specialist Cinos communications DEC have implemented a solution that enables users to connect via a room into Microsoft Teams to deliver a truly hybrid experience. Consultants can join share and collaborate like never before whether they are in a room with their colleagues or working from another location. Provided they have Microsoft Teams access they can be a part of that meeting.