Improving efficiency with MediShout

Insight

Currently, when healthcare staff face a technical issue not directly related to patient treatment, they don’t always follow a standardised process to report and resolve it. For IT, estates, facilities, stock and equipment issues reporting, people don’t always know which department to report an issue to and where to find the right contact details.

Without a centralised reporting system people reporting an issue and requesting help might not know their request has been received, if it was previously reported and when it is likely to be fixed. Broken or unavailable equipment can impact a hospitals ability to deliver care including the cancellation of operations. This could impact treatment targets and mean patients don’t get the care they need.

Intervention

MediShout provides a centralised system to report issues quickly – using cloud-based technology, it allows staff to flag any logistical issue that would otherwise delay them, adding photos if relevant. The algorithms ensure the correct person or group gets the information they need to fix it.

Additionally, MediShout uses artificial intelligence algorithms to predict future problems before they even occur and identify and prioritise the issues that would most affect patient care so these can be fixed first.

Ash Kalraiya, CEO of MediShout, was one of a handful of innovators selected through an Health Innovation East-led Estates and Facilities Innovation Exchange event which showcased promising innovations to local providers and commissioners.

Health Innovation East supported Ash to refine his product with contacts at Clinical Engineering Innovation (CEI) at Addenbrooke’s Hospital and funded an economic evaluation by Health Enterprise East (HEE) to estimate the extent to which MediShout might benefit local services. This was used as evidence to secure a place for the innovation on the NHS Innovation Accelerator (NIA) programme. MediShout is one of only 11 high impact innovations joining the national accelerator in 2020.

The NIA, which is an NHS England initiative delivered in partnership with England’s 15 s (AHSNs) and hosted at UCLPartners. Since 2015, it has supported the uptake and spread of 62 evidence-based innovations across more than 2,210 NHS sites. Independent evaluations report that NIA innovations are estimated to save the health and social care system £38 million a year.

Impact

The health economic research that Health Innovation East funded conducted a statistical analysis of the datasets for similar categories of issues in order to determine resolution rates and time savings per issue type. In order to provide robust possible cost saving estimations under various grades and specialties of staff being involved, the data were combined with NHS tariff and unit costs.

The estimated financial impact of introducing the intervention in the NHS could be significant, given the assumptions of time savings, reduced delays and cancellations avoided. The evaluation revealed that MediShout was used by 71.65% of the workforce in the hospitals departments/wards across the study. This resulted in 625 reported issues – 79.04% of which were completed within one month. Requests for support were mostly for estates, facilities, stock and equipment issues. 97% of staff using MediShout in the study felt it would give them more time with their patients.

Assuming a mix of personnel affected as 20% administration staff, 40% nurses (NHS band 5, average hourly compensation of the band) and 20% doctors, 15% associate specialists and 5% consultants, the analysis presented an approximate saving of £6,441 for all 625 reported issues (79.04% completed n=494) or £13.04 per issue rectified. Based oneach trust receiving around 20,000 calls for reported issues per year, the evaluation suggests that MediShout has the potential to save around £206,140.52 per hospital.

The evaluation also suggested that if MediShout could reduce the number of last-minute elective operations cancelled for non-clinical reasons by 2%-10% this could represent a potential saving to the NHS of between £6m-£30m per year. The evaluation also suggests a reduction in cancellations would provide further savings in administrative and clinical staff time to report and monitor the resolution of these issues.