Barts Health puts real-time mobile data into staff hands

England’s largest NHS Trust, Barts Health, is rolling out a new data analytics app that it says will improve patient care at its five London hospitals.

The WeInform app will be used by more than 16,000 employees at the hospitals and various community units, including doctors and nurses, to tap into data that can be used to help deliver “the best possible patient care,” according to Barts Health.

The app – developed in partnership with data specialists Qlik and Catalyst BI – will deliver information on waiting list times, demand surges and healthcare trends using mobile devices, and allow staff to take data around the hospital with them to refer to before making decisions.

Healthcare staff will be able to see patient data, including population health analysis, via a dashboard that they can refer to before making a decision on patient care. The app also features an alerting system that can be used for example to warn doctors and nurses if they have COVID-positive patients in hospital care.

Barts Health’s chief medical officer Charles Guttergide said the initiative is part of a drive to improve data literacy across the trust.

“WeInform will provide staff access to the data that they record at the point of care in our electronic health record, and so…will become the engine for quality improvement and population health analysis,” he added.

There has been a sharp increase in NHS trusts using data analytics to since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the crisis prompted the development of WeInform, with the app going from conception to launch in the space of just 10 months.

A Qlik report published last summer found that more than half (55%) of NHS Trusts were using analytics to track positive COVID-19 infections, with 22% using tech to identify when staff may have been exposed to the virus.

“Healthcare providers have been under increased and extraordinary pressure over the past year as demand for hospital services drastically increased,” said Adam Mayer, senior manager at Qlik.

“Barts Health is not only empowering their people to do more with data and improve their level of data literacy, they are insights directly into the hands of those that require it to make crucial life-saving decisions.”