Forres based Digital Health and Care Innovation Centre partners with Open Medical Pathpoint referrals
A national digital healthcare project based in Moray is working with a software company in London to improve NHS patient services.
The Digital Health and Care Innovation (DHI) Centre’s Rural Centre of Excellence at Altyre has partnered with specialists Open Medical on a referral management plan to help transform the community occupational therapy service in the region - and beyond.
Occupational therapist, Marie Simpson, is also a programme manager at the centre.
She explained: “The Rural Centre of Excellence is a £5million project funded by the UK government through the Moray Growth Deal with a focus on digital health and social care innovation in rural areas.
“We are raising the profile of Moray as a hot spot for digital companies that want to develop and test innovation for health and social care. We have partnerships with the public sector and citizens to test, and this project is a great example of how we work.
“The occupational therapy service managed by Health and Social Care Moray (HSCM) has been experiencing more requests for support - we looked at where digital could help. We are working with Open Medical to improve the service model, improving the quality of referrals and automatically triaging them.
“As a result, occupational therapists will be able to do more of their work instead of office admin and chasing information. Citizens will be able to get the support they need, faster, and it will create an asset that Open Medical can take to other services.”
Self-assessment and digital assessment tools will support self-management and reduce waiting times.
Open Medical’s ‘Pathpoint’ referral management software will improve the quality of information in referrals and determine the priority of requests, reducing the time occupational therapists spend chasing and assessing.
HSCM’s team supports people who need home adaptations or equipment to help with daily tasks such as toileting, accessing bathing facilities or managing stairs. Anyone can make a referral to the service with the resident’s consent. This is screened by the access care team and triaged by an occupational therapist.
However, at times referrals are incomplete or inappropriate so Open Medical and the DHI held workshops with occupational therapists to understand such challenges and create a new digitally enabled service.
The company has integrated Pathpoint with the Mydex CIC Personal Data Store, making it easier for patients to upload information about themselves and share it with health care services. This allows patients to enter data once to access other services, reducing the need to repeat themselves, while improving the quality of information in the referrals.
Pathpoint will screen ineligible referrals, signpost users and determine if they need a digital or face-to-face assessment.
Head of research at Open Medical, Dr Tim Hoogenboom, believes it is “fantastic” to see the DHI taking a pro-active approach.
He said: “We have really enjoyed collaborating with the DHI and the occupational therapy team in Moray to determine how our toolkit can evolve. The systems we build must adapt to, and be supportive of, the way that clinical teams work.
“The testing phase of the project is about to start, so we look forward to feedback for occupational therapy services in the UK and globally.”
The new system will be refined before a decision is made on whether to adopt it permanently. If the project is successful, Open Medical plans to commercialise the work to create a new occupational therapy product.
