Parity Medical talks IT in the NHS

Steve Wood, a director of healthcare IT specialist Parity Medical explains how his organisation is helping the NHS meet its goals.

The use of IT in the NHS is a bugbear of national newspapers, who love to point out each failure as it occurs without also trumpeting the successes.

It is also one of the key drivers in improving patient care across the UK but, like all essential systems, it requires continual development.

To this end, NHS England launched the Clinical Digital Maturity Index (CDMI) in November 2013 to help the organisation meet its IT objectives.

The first myth to dispel is the idea that the NHS is somehow failing. This could not be further from the truth; in fact the NHS was recently declared the best healthcare system in the world by the Commonwealth Fund, a Washington-based foundation which is respected across the globe for its analysis of the performance of different countries' health systems.

The report rated the NHS as superior to countries that spend far more on health than the UK.

The CDMI

Despite this, like all good organisations, the NHS seeks to improve continually and its IT provision is no exception to this rule. The CDMI is a key part of this improvement.

The system is a benchmarking tool that enables NHS hospitals to understand how investing in, then effectively using, information technology can improve patient safety and outcomes, reduce bureaucracy, and deliver efficiencies.

The index is free to use for all NHS organisations and measures everything from e-prescribing to e-referral.

Its objective is to help rate technical capabilities in order to define progress. The key is that it is not about encouraging competition between trusts, instead it focuses on sharing success and best practice.

Beverley Bryant, Director of Strategic Systems and Technology for NHS England, said: “Digital systems drive up the quality and safety of patient care by preventing drugs being prescribed incorrectly and, potentially, lethally because patient notes have been lost.

“The CDMI has been created specifically as a means of putting insight into the hands of clinicians, senior managers and boards, to enable them to review and identify best practice."

The CDMI is the first in a range of Digital Maturity Indicators that the NHS is working on. The NHS partner organisation Digital Health, formerly EHI intelligence, has created a repository of further data and reports about it on the company's website.

Since the CDMI launched in 2013, there has been a notable deepening of engagement with digital healthcare in NHS trusts according to Digital Health, with most publishing strategic documents explaining how they intend to progress.

Digital uptake

A large part of our business at Parity is helping to improve workflow for healthcare providers.

We've not just improved efficiency by using more data points, we've gone a step further. We now incorporate wireless and mobile technologies to improve the accessibility of information at the bedside and anywhere else it's needed, such as in mobile wireless computer carts and handheld devices.

We have also found that telemedicine and wearable technologies have resulted in further improvements in IT uptake across the NHS.

I've even seen the creation of Chief Clinical Information Officer roles in many trusts to drive user implementation of digital technology. I find this fascinating, given that most already have CTOs (Chief Technology Officers) - it demonstrates that the job is too big for any one individual to oversee, even within a single trust. 

Naturally, the increased reliance on digital technology has meant that Parity Medical has been able to help trusts up and down the country, by providing IT equipment, including mobile carts, at a glance status screens, PACs (Picture Archiving and Communication devices) and patient entertainment systems.

This has been hugely successful but one issue it has raised is a lack of knowledge in healthcare trusts about the fundamentals of electrical engineering that go hand in hand with IT installation work.

Most of these are not clinical issues and IT consultants like us can deal with them properly without the need for further consideration at trust level.

However, one in particular stands out as being an issue that requires further assessment as the NHS progresses through the CDMI and other parts of the ongoing Digital Maturity Indicator pathway. 

IEC 60601

IEC 60601 is a series of technical standards for the safety and effectiveness of medical electrical equipment, published by the International Electrotechnical Commission.

It covers basic safety and essential performance and is a requirement for the commercialisation of electrical medical equipment in many countries.

Part of this standard demands that adequate isolation should be applied to medical devices when in use. This also applies to specialist medical IT equipment when used in a healthcare setting. 

Of course, Parity Medical is an IT expert, not an electrical engineering specialist, which is why we chose to obtain Healthcare Solutions Provider status from global electrical manufacturer REO.

This allows us to integrate the company's REOMED compact transformer for use in medical applications, which solves the isolation issue we encounter in medical IT installations.

Conforming to international standards DIN EN IEC 60601-1 3rd edition, the Unimed transformer can be configured to use a variety of input voltage combinations from 0-115V to 0-100-115V, providing an output voltage of 230V.

Rated from 100-2000 VA for larger applications, the unit offers high efficiency and high capacity with no hum and low power losses, as well as a reduced magnetic stray field.

In effect, the transformer protects both patients and other medical equipment from electrical current.

This can be vital in a surgical setting. Once the outer layer of epidermis that provides an earth is penetrated, the body's natural insulation is reduced.

This is where a REO medical isolation transformer minimises leakage currents, enhancing patient protection.

As a result, we now advise the use of this kind of equipment in all relevant installations to comply with IEC 60601-1.

It is my belief that, as the NHS reaches its own definition of full digital maturity this kind of work will be vital in ensuring patient safety.

If the NHS is to remain a leader in world healthcare, as the Commonwealth Fund believes it already is, this kind of attention to detail to ensure patient safety will be a key part of its progress.