With the major changes in the UK healthcare sector that the NHS announced earlier this year, the focus on cost efficiencies is more important than ever, with the government calling for NHS savings of up to £20bn by 2014. Most of these will come in the next two years as more than 20,000 management and administration staff are made redundant from health authorities, primary care trusts and the Department of Health, with management responsibility going to doctors and clinical workers.
Last week, we announced results of clinical trials conducted across 10 hospitals in six European countries using Dell’s Mobile Clinical Computing (MCC) solution and the results were quite impressive. Our trials showed that using MCC can potentially increase productivity in excess of three hours per clinician per week and the solution helps significantly improve patient waiting times. The solution also reduced application access time by 83 percent during clinical trials. These are significant time savings in light of increasingly stretched resources in hospitals and health facilities.
We published a whitepaper which was developed in partnership with Intel and Ignetica Ltd, according to the Business Value of IT (BVIT) methodology, that highlights the benefits of MCC technology in real-life hospital environments.
Dell’s MCC solution lets hospital staff access and update patient information from any system, enabling clinical staff to provide more efficient and effective patient care.
The trials, which were conducted in University Hospitals Birmingham Foundation NHS Trust (UK), Centre Oscar Lambret (France) and SRH Kurpfalz (Germany), among other hospitals, clearly demonstrated positive results for patients and staff, generating potentially very significant net economic value through increased productivity.
Specifically, the trials showed that there are potential productivity gains of more than three hours per user, per week, which is equal to over £10,000 per user per annum. Less time spent looking for information or accessing systems means more time for patient care.
The study also indicated that 20-40 percent of all hospital helpdesk incidents are password related, and the single sign-on nature of MCC saves helpdesk and clinician time, increasing productivity.
In most hospital environments, IT administrators have to install and customise applications on each system individually. With MCC, applications reside securely in the data centre, significantly reducing the time required to configure and commission the PC into its local environment and simplifying its ongoing management. The trials found that there is potential for deployment time to be reduced by two thirds with MCC.
For a real-life glimpse into some of the hospitals that participated in the trial and how they used the technology, check out these videos from Mid Yorkshire Hospital NHS Trust in the UK and OLVG in the Netherlands:
Based on use by Senior Doctors (senior reviewer usage category) – Dell Mobile Clinical Computing, Ignetica 2010. The time released and associated economic value varies by usage categories, please see the white paper for further details.