2021 – Wow What a year!
2021 for many in the NHS has been a year of exigency, of coping with Covid, of trying to bring down the backlogs with fewer staff, of colleagues isolating or drafted in to help with vaccination programmes… But it has also been a time of increased investment and of the rapid uptake in digital services. 22 million registered on the NHS Covid App shows how ready the public is to use digital in their daily life. 2021 has seen a major ‘sea change‘ in the NHS.
NB: For those academics among you – ‘sea change’ (sometimes written C change) means transformation. It was first couched in 1610 by Shakespeare in the Tempest. Where Ariel describes the physical transformation that the sea had wrought on his drowned father.
2021 – when data became the new oil
2021 was not only a year when vast numbers started accessing the NHS digitally, but it was also a year when the need for accurate and complete data became obvious. The need is for data that not only encompasses clinical records but also ensures that the administrative and reporting processes are in step. We are truly in a digital tsunami and accurate, consolidated data can give us a clear view of pressure points and what to do next. Partial data muddies the water.
At Insource, we believe data is the life blood of healthcare delivery. But that data must be reliable, accurate and easily accessible if frontline staff are the be given complete information to deliver the best quality patient care.
Transformative year for Insource
The focus on data this year has enabled Insource to truly come into its own. Our 20-year data investment has delivered a solution ahead of its time which is available now. Our data management platform is proving invaluable throughout the NHS in all walks of life – from acute, community, mental health and independent providers to ICSs, NHSE and partner applications. It is enabling disparate data to be acquired, unified and standardised – despite the legacy infrastructure so prevalent throughout the NHS.
2021 began with a bang with the acquisition of Gooroo Ltd, the premier provider of capacity planning and forecasting solutions. Embedded into our elective care solutions suite this powerful joint offering has proved attractive across the service. New elective care customers include institutions such as – Leeds Teaching Hospitals, South Tees Hospitals, and independent provider DMC Healthcare… and existing clients have also expanded their Insource solution set. NHS Highland, for example, are implementing region-wide Cancer Tracking, Royal Papworth have improved trust-wide data quality and incorporated billing, and Humber are inputting a fully validated source of community and mental health pathway data into the wider regional shared care record.
Unified data garnering partner interest
Whilst our customers are benefiting from our innovative waiting list management solutions it is perhaps our underlying data management technology that has created the biggest stir. Fitting directly with the NHS Data Strategy, our ability to deliver a Unified Data Layer (UDL) which is application-independent and provides validated patient-level pathway and operational data in near real-time has generated a lot of partner and NHS England interest.
Our proven data automation platform extracts data from disparate PAS/EPR, diagnostic, and other departmental data systems across entire trusts, ICSs or regions and combines it into a single source of the truth.
Some key partner engagements are already in place including Dr Foster/Telstra UK , where Insource is providing automated, near real-time data feeds and enterprise-wide capacity planning for its Elective Recovery Programme. The joint solution gives command-level control of, and powerful insight into, accurate trust-wide or system-wide data for targeted elective care recovery.
Our collaborative partnership with Logan Tod & Co uses AI-enhanced process mining tools to visualise patient journeys with existing patient flow data. The resultant Patient journey analytics enables Trusts to create actionable insights to accelerate patient flow and reduce waiting times.
Extending our reach
With such a focus on data we have been extending our reach this year to make Insource solutions more easily available. We are now one of seven providers that have been awarded a national framework for the provision of Data Validation Services by The Countess of Chester Hospital Commercial Procurement Services (COCH-CPS). Insource is also now an authorised partner on the £10bn capacity Fortrus Digital Transformation Framework. For all our frameworks see – How to work with us.
Turning our data into insight
Perhaps our biggest challenge this year has been to fully explain the complete range of our services and their relevance in today’s data hungry environments. So, whilst our solutions turn your data into insight, we embarked on a journey of redoing our website, laying out our full solutions and data management portfolio, explaining what we do and refocusing the company against the immediate needs of each part of the healthcare market. Unlocking this cornucopia has proved hugely productive. And whilst we currently work with over 45 NHS Trusts and Health Boards, this is rapidly expanding with our ongoing NHSE and partner projects.
2021 has proven to be a very exciting and formative year for Insource. Our data management platform has been shown to be a great foundation for consolidating NHS data. It is also proving to be a sound investment for the future data management of healthcare organisations across UK.
