With increasing budget challenges, healthcare organisations are starting to embrace technology to achieve improved workflow, paperless offices and better operational efficiency.

As a tool that can automate any business process – from the everyday to the more complex – FlowForma BPM can be used to digitise a variety of business processes within the healthcare sector from annual leave requests to incident management and nurse and midwife revalidation.

This is particularly useful when it comes to the HR Performance Appraisal Process, which has proved challenging for many of the healthcare organisation we work with. A complex and time-consuming process for any large organisation, this process is often amplified for healthcare bodies, given the size of these organisations and the complexities of contracts. With promotions and pay rises often decided from this process, organisations need a BPM tool that guarantees accuracy and traceability – which is why many of our customers have selected FlowForma as their BPM tool of choice.

Streamlining performance appraisals at Barts Health NHS Trust

One example of a healthcare customer using FlowForma to streamline their Performance Appraisal process is Barts Health NHS Trust, which is currently the largest NHS Trust in England.

Having previously used a time-consuming, paper-based process structure, which lacked visibility, Bart engaged with FlowForma and a local partner to deploy a more streamlined process using the FlowForma BPM. With FlowForma, they avoided the need for complex functional specifications, which resulted in rapid prototyping and instant responsiveness to their HR department. Changes, which the hospitals were accustomed to taking months, could now be made instantly; forms, templates, fields and layouts could be ‘tweaked’ on the go.

As a result, Barts has improved their process visibility and traceability, increased productivity and started to benefit from seamless reporting. Using FlowForma, their processes have become structured and simpler, administration tasks reduced and individuals empowered to spend more time on what they do best –– serving the healthcare needs of the citizen.

If you too are struggling with your processes, and would like to find out how you can benefit from seamless online process management, visit www.flowforma.com to find out more about FlowForma, sign up for a free trial or book a personalised one-to-one demo with one of our experts.

Visit FlowForma’s website

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Earlier this year, we began working in partnership with an NHS Foundation Trust operating 3 hospitals and several clinics in London. With over 9,000 staff and over a million patients a year, they are one of the largest Trusts in the UK.

However, due to outdated on-premise servers, the Trust were unable to scale data storage and processes to their needs in peak usage time and when their data servers went down it often took days to resolve.

As a result, the Trust identified there was a real risk of data loss, resulting in an inability to book patients in or search for patient records. Furthermore, with lengthy infrastructure procurement negotiations projects were being constantly severely delayed, which stifled improvement and innovation within the Trust as a whole.

Elastabytes recognised this was a large-scale job to undertake and identified the most cost-effective first step for the Trust would be a migration of their servers to the Azure cloud. By implementing SQL Server as PaaS the Trust were able to reduce on-premises costs, as spending money on servers, power and air conditioning was no longer necessary.

Not only did this reduce costs but the Trust can now scale automatically so they are covered for maximum workloads. Scalability has meant the Trust is only using the resources that they require at any one moment, and vastly improved backup and restore routines mean that in the event of a server failure at the worst possible time, the Trust will be right back on track with no chance of data loss.

By moving to Azure the Trust were able to reduce the procurement cycle meaning they can move much quicker on projects, show return on investment (ROI) and innovate within a strict budget.

Being able to innovate quickly and know that your data is in safe hands means that projects can start on time, staff are empowered to deliver value and, above all, costs are kept under control. In real terms, moving to the cloud has really taken the pressure off a lot of our client’s already-strained employees. It has freed staff up from endless meetings about procurement and meeting budgets.

No longer are projects and productivity hindered by protracted processes. They are free to embrace new technologies far quicker to drive change, efficiency and reduce cost. As a result, the trust is now leveraging the new technology to provide life-changing innovations for patient care.

If you would like to hear more about this story, or find out how Elastabytes could help you revolutionise your SQL infrastructure with Azure, head to www.elastabytes.com or email info@elastabytes.com.

Visit Elastabytes’ website

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The recent Wachter Report ‘Making IT work: harnessing the power of health information technology to improve care in England‘ highlights some of the key challenges NHS organisations have faced when it comes to IT.

So, what can Health organisations do to begin their transformation journey? This is the first of a series of blogs focused on Health Innovators working in line with the triple aim of improving population health, enhancing the healthcare experience and reducing the per capita cost of healthcare delivery.

We will be showcasing how these innovators have helped Health organisations engage with patients, empower care teams, optimise clinical & operational effectiveness and transform the care continuum.

Cloud2 and the Royal Liverpool & Broadgreen University Hospitals (RLBUHT) NHS Trust

As one of the largest Acute hospital trusts in the North West, the Royal Liverpool & Broadgreen University Hospitals provides services to almost one million patients each year.

Managing a budget of over £400m and 6,000 staff, RLBUHT has placed emphasis on streamlining processes to drive greater productivity for staff and more efficient service delivery to meet the needs of the large number of patients.

As part of this drive for efficiency, RLBUHT announced a vision for a ‘New Royal’, which includes a £335m digital hospital due to open in 2017.

With a focus on using digital solutions and processes, RLBUHT’s operational  managers needed a central dashboard where they could see the latest performance using key operational KPIs for A&E, RTT, Bed Occupancy, Cancer Wait Times and more, with the ability to drill down for more granular information where needed.

The success of Coeus has led to further transformation opportunities.

For example, the work done has led to a proof of concept project to predict A&E demand based on leveraging the artificial intelligence capabilities of Azure machine learning to analyse 5 years of A&E data combined with weather data.

“We’re pleased to be working with Cloud2 on the A&E Predictor Tool combining A&E data with Met Office weather. The primary aim is to see how Azure Machine Learning will accelerate our reporting from historical to predictive analytics”

Paul Morris, Head of Business Intelligence

“This is an exciting period for Cloud2 and the Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust’s relationship. We’re looking forward to helping them on their journey and sharing this learning with the wider NHS. Since the opening of the new Microsoft UK datacentres, we are seeing significantly more interest in all aspects of Azure adoption from migrating file shares to Predictive Analytics” adds Taran Sohal, Cloud2 Director.

Watch the full Cloud2 case study

To learn how Microsoft and Cloud2 can help you use artificial intelligence for predictive BI, as well as deliver digital transformation for back office, please take the opportunities to meet with Microsoft and Cloud2 at the joint event ‘The art of the possible – the NHS perspective’, which is happening in Manchester on December 7th.

For more information and to register, please visit Cloud2.

The post Health Innovators You should Know About: How Cloud2 helped drive digital intelligence in hospitals appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Ahead of next week’s exhibition we are pleased to share a post from Cloud2 that explores its role in the ongoing digital transformation at Royal Liverpool & Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust.

Cloud2 was founded in 2008 by Taran Sohal and Simon Hudson, with a purpose to support the development of SharePoint projects in the health sector. This first took the form of a zero-code pre-built intranet accelerator, Hadron, the success of which led to multiple healthcare accelerators, for business process and workflow, advanced analytics and business intelligence. With NHS Trusts increasingly moving from on-premise deployments to cloud services such as Azure and Office 365, Cloud2’s zero-code approach makes their solutions compatible from the outset.

Since then, Cloud2’s aim has broadened to help healthcare organisations achieve their strategic objectives through innovative digital transformation solutions built on a range of proven Microsoft accelerators.

This approach can be seen in action at Royal Liverpool & Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust.

As one of the largest Acute hospital trusts in the North West, with a budget over of £400m and 6,000 staff, RLBUHT provides services to almost one million patients each year. At the centre of the vision for the Trust is the ‘New Royal’ – a £335m digital hospital due to open in 2017. At the same time, the Carter Report and recent Wachter Review have highlighted areas to focus on to help the trust meet their cost reduction plan of £25m this year.

RLBUHT’s Operational managers needed a central dashboard where they could see the latest performance using key operational KPI’s for A&E, RTT, Bed Occupancy, Cancer Wait Times and more, with the ability to drill down for more granular information where needed.

Coeus is built on Meson – Cloud2’s business intelligence portal. Cloud2 provided their existing A&E optimised data model which was connected to RLBUHT’s A&E data. The Operations team used to have a weekly meeting with a pile of papers to go through, now they use the live Coeus BI Portal.

“Coeus went live to all 6,000 staff in 8 weeks from project initiation to go live, with the majority of our existing reporting migrated and this was one of the smoothest projects we’ve ever done”.

Paul Morris, Head of Business Intelligence

The success of Coeus has led to a proof of concept project to enable the trust to predict A&E demand. This has been based on leveraging the artificial intelligence capabilities of Azure machine learning to analyse 5 years of A&E data combined with weather data. 18 variables were identified as worth exploring for their impact on A&E attendances, of which 4 variables were confirmed as being statistically significant. The trust is exploring additional proof of concept predictive BI projects in partnership with Microsoft and Cloud2, taking advantage of the recent availability of Microsoft’s UK datacentres.

Further information and a video case study can be found with Cloud2.

To learn how Microsoft and Cloud2 can help you use artificial intelligence for predictive BI, as well as deliver digital transformation for back office, please visit the Microsoft stand (IB6O) and find Cloud2 in the Microsoft Partner Village (stand MV6) at EHI Live on November 1st-2nd.

If you are not going to EHI Live, there are further opportunities to meet with Microsoft and Cloud2 at the joint event ‘The art of the possible – the NHS perspective’, which is happening in London on November 9th, and in Manchester on December 7th.

For more information and to register, please visit Cloud2.

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Every year healthcare professionals from across the country come together at EHI Live in Birmingham to discuss the challenges of meeting healthcare needs today and into the future.

Microsoft are pleased to continue our presence, hosting a partner village full of innovative solutions, ranging from hybrid mail to complete intranet and BI solutions. You can find a full list of Microsoft Partners exhibiting in the village further below.

Microsoft at EHI Live

Our vision is to empower citizens and healthcare organisations to achieve more and we’d love to talk to you about how we can help you achieve your vision. The Microsoft Health team will also be at the show, so please come and meet us in our lounge area at stand IB60 to talk about our customers’ innovations.

We have many stories about how different technologies have been used by a broad range of healthcare organisations to improve key areas of delivery already. This includes putting patients in control of their data and improving the speed and way in which information is recorded, shared and acted upon in to better deliver care.

Talk to our team and partners at EHI Live to learn more about the role technology has played in empowering healthcare organisations all over the country to revolutionise out of hours stroke diagnosis, get patient data to key staff in the shortest possible time, transform consultations, help clinicians spend more time with patients, and change the lives of people with epilepsy.

Microsoft Partner Village Exhibitors at EHI Live 2016

Cloud2 – complete intranet and BI solutions in weeks, not years
Dynamic Health Systems – engaging patients in co-creating healthcare
GPC – 3D wound care solution
NDL – transforming healthcare through digital integration
Northdoor – data platform modernisation and transformation
Paper Post – Hybrid mail for healthcare
Wellingtone – specialists in project management

Please visit our Bubl to learn more about what’s happening in the Microsoft Partner Village, current initiatives and promotions in health, as well as upcoming webinars and events.

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