News
Digital pen and paper increases productivity of Rotherham
physiotherapists by 35%
28 April 2010
Rotherham Community Health Services, part of NHS Rotherham has
found that the use of digital pen and paper has enabled its
physiotherapists to capture notes, form data and diagrams more
efficiently, giving productivity gains of 35%
NHS Rotherham deployed a system provided by Ubisys that used Anoto
digital pen and paper technology.
Rotherham Community Health Services provides a range of mobile
technologies to support their remote workers in providing care and
interacting with its electronic patient record SystmOne/TPP.
When Rotherham first trialled the Anoto Digital Pens they targeted
physiotherapy practitioners as they need the ability to capture notes,
structured form data and diagrams with speed and in an empathetic manner
when in consultation.
Paul Chapman, Clinical Lead for Information Technology and a
physiotherapist himself explains: “In my clinic I need to assess and
treat patients whilst also recording a lot of clinically relevant
information in a very short period of time. In May 2007 SystmOne/TPP was
introduced across a majority of its physiotherapy service we quickly
found that the manual inputting required via the keyboard desktop
solution actually slowed us down by 40 minutes per session, the
equivalent of not seeing two new patients per day.
"We trialled digital pen’s and quickly discovered that not only were
we able to recover the 40 minutes per session lost through
administration for new patients, but it also helped us to increase
consultation time with existing patients by 15%. The time savings are
derived from the ability to conduct the clinic more efficiently through
recording profession clinical specific information which in turn
complements the electronic information held in SystmOne, giving a
complete clinical record.
"It has given me back more time to treat the patient. In phase two we
hope to take this integration to the next level thus maximising our
return and further enhancing the solution which will give us even more
patient time and better outcomes, therefore supporting the QIPP agenda”.
 “The
benefits and the return are clear and measureable,” says Alan Meloy,
Deputy Head of IT at NHS Rotherham. “This solution quickly helped meet
our objectives for a more complete care record whilst increasing
productivity and efficiency in a cost-effective package. From an IT
perspective the solution delivers quickly and does not demand a large
internal support overhead which helps me maximise our IT resources.”
NHS Rotherham is presenting the results at
HC2010 on Wednesday 28th April at the ICC in Birmingham.
Tarek Ghouri, MD of Ubisys says “We are delighted by the gains
Rotherham Community Health Services has achieved with our solution. We
enjoy working closely with them and are now exploring deploying the
technology to other services to extend the return on investment even
further. These gains are typical of what we see from deployments across
the social and health care sectors, an area in which we specialise. We
are looking forward to rolling out to more services within Rotherham and
securing a further nine Trusts in the next few weeks."
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