Highly commended in national award
Staff at Kettering General Hospital who created a mobile phone App to help patients on the road to recovery following operations have won a highly commended placing in a national award.
The KGH Post Op App has been created by doctors and nurses working together with patients and external technology experts.
It achieved highly commended (second place) in the HSJ Digital Awards 2024 in the
Digital pathways to Net Zero category. HSJ Digital Awards 2024: Moving Towards Net Zero Through Digital | HSJ Awards | Health Service Journal
It also reached the finals in another award category for Supporting Elective Recovery through Digital.
The App enables patients to answer key questions about their recovery through mobile phone questionnaires as well as posting pictures and video of their wounds for doctors and nurses to study.
It provides patients great reassurance their recovery is progressing and helps them save time and money by reducing the need to attend hospital follow-up appointments – reducing the impact of patients on the environment through car journeys.
Patients who have been involved in the pilot last year have been enthusiastic about how much support it enables them to have quick access to key hospital staff.
Associate Specialist in Trauma and Orthopaedics Mr Faizal Rayan, Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon Hamidreza Khairandish, Infection Control Nurse Specialist Sara Monteiro and Elective Nurse Practitioner, Melanie Moore, worked with patients and technology experts to develop the App.
Mr Rayan said: “We are all absolutely delighted to have achieved highly commended in this prestigious national award.
“More importantly though the App is about making the experience of having an operation at hospital and then recovering afterwards easier and less stressful for patients.
“It is about using technology to help reduce concerns and give them the confidence that everything is going well.
“In those cases where people do have problems – such as wound infections or difficulty in moving after joint replacements – we can see from pictures and videos what the problem might be and act quickly to address it if necessary.”
One of the aims of the new App it is to help standardise recovery care and so far it has been used for elective hip and knee replacements and colorectal operations.
Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon Hamidreza Khairandish said: “We very much hope the use of the App will be able to be expanded across the Trust to support more of our patients.
“We have also demonstrated it at events and are getting interest in it from other NHS Trusts.
“It is an excellent example of the use of digital technology to help monitor and improve the patient experience of hospital care and after care.”
Patients are given a QR cope and can load the App only with the permission of the hospital to ensure privacy and data security. It can be used for some standard patient questionnaires which must be carried out after operations and also for ones tailored to find out particular outcomes.
Benefits of the App have included:
- A 15% reduction in the number of post-operative follow-up calls, suggesting that patients could obtain the information they required.
· - A 10% decrease in the number of readmissions for complications
· - NHS savings of about £60,000 per 100 patients because it reduced the frequency of unnecessary inpatient visits, leading to decreased use of hospital resources and associated environmental impacts, including energy consumption and medical waste.
· — 25% reduction in patient travel-related carbon emissions
· — Reduced paper use
People from various backgrounds, including those with medical limitations, can benefit from the program because it is user-friendly, easily accessible, and incorporates features like voice navigation and font sizes that can be customized.
This digital award nomination celebrates a unique collaboration between clinicians, patients and the digital team towards improving patient care at Kettering. The digital team led by group CDO Natasha Chare and Ramandeep Kaur, CCIO at Kettering and their predecessors ensured continuous and seamless deployment of the application into all surgical pathways.
The HSJ Digital Awards finals were held in Manchester on June 6.