Dr Aklak Choudhury presented the latest achievements of the Trust using Ascribe eHandover at Microsoft Sharepoint global Conference in Las Vegas

3rd December 2012 – The Ascribe eHandover solution was recently presented at the global Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2012, by Dr Aklak Choudhury, Clinical Lead for Ambulatory Care at Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust (BHR), who developed the solution in partnership with Ascribe.

The Annual Conference took place in Nevada, Las Vegas where over 10,000 people attended. The presentation, led by Dr Choudhury, was well attended by close to 1,000 people, to share the real-life healthcare example of the importance of having integrated business-critical solutions.

Ascribe eHandover is a SharePoint based solution which improves business-critical processes and provides a list of patients and their applicable locations (wards, beds and specialties) within the hospital. From these patient lists, clinicians are able to create handover records at any point during their shift. A handover list is therefore effectively built for each shift.

Dr Choudhury cited in his presentation, that in the first 14 months of its operation, 21,500 handover records were logged and actioned in the system by 332 separate clinicians. Handover meeting times decreased from 45 minutes down to 20 minutes, improving productivity among teams within the hospital. These results are a remarkable testament to the success of the solution which was adopted organically.

Since the Ascribe eHandover solution won the 2011 EHI Award for “Best use of IT to promote patient safety” and the Microsoft Partner of the Year for Health Award, the solution has gone from strength to strength and has a better reputation both internally and externally. First, falling patient mortality has led to increased patient safety and therefore higher patient satisfaction. Second, based on an eHandover implementation survey, the doctors showed greater than 35% point rises in satisfaction for production of handover lists, identification of sick patients in the hospital, and clarity of handover task status. In fact, the doctors selected BHR as #1 out of 34 hospital trusts in London, vs. the year before when BHR ranked in the lowest third. Finally, BHR has gained reputation in the industry as a beacon site for medical handover and is now working with Medical Education England to potentially set the processes as a “standard” for all health organisations in the UK. 

Dr Choudhury commented: “The Ascribe eHandover solution is the first to identify and successfully manage the shift gap issue which results in significant communication failure and patient risk during nights and weekends. It provides the user with the functionality to complete their handover tasks safely, efficiently and without duplication.”

Gabor Fari, Director of Life Sciences Solutions at Microsoft, attended the presentation and commented: “This is an amazing testimony of how eHandover on SharePoint has the potential to save hundreds of patient lives in the UK.”

Further information (external website)