Cloud-based clinical solutions are the way forward, says Piyush Mahapatra, Director of Innovation at Open Medical
In the age of coronavirus, we have seen a dramatic rise in the need for innovative services to better manage our workforce across a wide range of sectors. However, perhaps where this is most urgently needed is in the clinical setting, where the need to ensure maximum efficiency is a continual process.
However, as many of us know, the current tools to manage workflow and patient pathways are often severely outdated, inefficient, and can pose a great danger to care if left unchecked. The need for a comprehensive, modern, and easy-to-use system is immediate, and this is where OpenMedical comes in.
Tackling inefficiency in orthopaedics
In clinical trauma settings, the need to quickly and reliably deliver urgent care is at the absolute pinnacle of priority – as it should be. However, this means that systems such as patient management, staff management, and even IT in general, can be left by the wayside.
These systems can be improved, but are not impacting the quality of care ‘directly’. If it isn’t ‘broke’, then don’t fix it.
Yet this is a toxic mindset to encourage. Thinking in this way has resulted in an enormous lack of innovation and development in how clinics, and even trusts at large, manage patients and staff alike. While it may not seem like these systems require immediate improvement, they really do.
“In pretty much every hospital, there’s a trauma board – usually a physical whiteboard – and this is how outpatients who are awaiting surgery are managed. But one morning, we came in to see that the whole whiteboard had been wiped off,” says Piyush.
“There were about 10 to 15 patients waiting at home, nobody really knew who they were, and it was a mad scramble to look through old documents and scraps of paper to try and find them. We thought that there had to be a better way to manage patients than this.”
And this was where eTrauma V1 was born – a simple, local database for managing patients. This later developed into Pathpoint: a cloud-based, clinical coordination platform, designed to replace the whiteboards of days past – and provide clinicians with the ability to customise and streamline patient care and clinical workflow.
“The gap in the market was really that the current systems which are available, such as electronic patient record systems, are good for documentation, but they’re very poor for clinical process and workflow; and that is what we were trying to address. We’re all practising clinicians, so we had a good understanding of what those challenges were and how to build a system to address that need,” says Piyush.
Since its initialization, eTrauma has rapidly expanded across the NHS. As the market-leading solution for patient pathways in the sector, more than 22 NHS Trusts are using eTrauma in hospitals and clinical settings. On top of the proven effectiveness and uptake of eTrauma as a service, it also incorporates integration with every major EPR solution including Cerner’s EPR systems – opening the doors to Cerner-based organisations, wherever they are in the world, at the flick of a switch.
“As with many cloud-based systems, we require no installation or resource on the ground from the organisation. The platform is provided as a software-as-a-service solution with no lock-ins to ensure that healthcare organisations have access to the best technologies that meet their needs at that time”, says Piyush.
Multiple solutions for multiple pathways and international scope
However, Pathpoint does not only provide solutions for orthopaedics but a wide range of specialities, incorporating dermatology, perioperative care, plastics, ophthalmology, intensive care, rehabilitation services and with many more on the way.
“In addition to the workflow and pathway solutions offered through Pathpoint, we offer specific technologies catering to many different requirements – for instance we have a clinical trial management system, a digital consent system, virtual waiting lists, the list goes on,” says Piyush.
“One of the significant benefits is that we’re very agile. We can match with the changing requirements which come along throughout the process, and incorporate it seamlessly. We’re integrated with the NHS Spine and working quite closely with NHS Digital.”
Furthermore, Pathpoint is not limited to UK-based or NHS providers indefinitely. While Pathpoint has not yet ventured out of the UK market, Piyush says that Open Medical are currently considering which international markets would best suit their product line.
“In terms of our international objectives, it’s a question we’ve been debating quite a lot, and we are very much looking into what would be the best market for Pathpoint. Currently, the Middle East might be a point of access, while the US, Canada and Australia are all options,” says Piyush.
“In addition to this, we use a very structured model utilising the international vocabulary standard, Snomed CT, so it’s a very transportable vocabulary code – and it can be translated. So, if we wanted to incorporate a Spanish system, for instance, we could use the Spanish translation and it would work the same.”
All in all, Open Medical’s clinical solutions provide an efficient and straightforward pathway to ensuring better patient care, benefiting the clinician, the management, and the organisation at large – with no need for large scale upheavals of IT and modern systems.
Pathpoint was born from the idea of fixing the simplest of problems, and has grown into one of the best systems to tackle clinical inefficiency and workflow issues – and it’s not done yet.