Successful Second UK User Group Meeting
Last week on Wednesday 16th October, the UK Prospitalia h-trak team hosted the second Annual h-trak User Group meeting in London. Once again County Hall was the stage for a day of collaborative knowledge sharing and future scoping amongst our NHS Trust and Managed Service healthcare customers.
Setting the scene for the day was Toni Mateus da Silva, UK General Manager, who reminded the audience of the current patient safety landscape and encouraged them to open their minds on how h-trak could be extended to address patient safety aspects, such as Never Events’ prevention.
James Mayne, Head of Programme Management at the University Hospitals of Derby and Burton NHS Foundation Trust (UHDB), expanded on the theme of Never Events, citing examples where barcode scanning and accurate product master data could prevent occurrences of wrong site surgery. James outlined the current initiatives that UHDB has been working on: the automation of data feeds into the National Joint Register (NJR) and the feasibility of using real-time NJR data for in-theatre use to ensure right- side surgery for implants.
The Trust is also exploring how the h-trak software and handhelds could be used for in-theatre Team briefings and ensuring the Who moment, which precedes every procedure, is recorded.
The audience for the day was made up equally of clinical, theatre management and procurement professionals so we were delighted to hear from InHealth, who are using h-trak in their Cath labs at St Peter’s Hospital, Ashford and in their mobile Cath lab unit.
Matthew Griffiths, Group Procurement Manager of InHealth UK, outlined the benefits as a result of the invaluable procedural data that they have gained by using h-trak; the elimination of waste; the vast reductions in stock holding and generally having transparent consumption and cost reporting. InHealth are also seeing clinical productivity benefits with significant reductions in lab turnaround times, which has improved the utilisation of cath labs.
Kirk Kikirekov, Managing Director of Prospitalia h-trak, provided a business update for the UK, Australian and German business operations. Later in the day Kirk presented the h-trak software development roadmap and gave a demonstration of h-control, the business intelligence platform that analyses h-trak data (and other data sources) to provide insights across a range of procedural, procurement and financial parameters. The re-development of the h-trak resource system which will be rolled out to customers in early 2020 was also shown to the audience.
Two interactive sessions during the day were used fully to explore how trust and healthcare customers utilise h-trak; how they overcome initial staff resistance (which is common for any new way of working) and how they see the software being used beyond the theatre.
The value of the day came from sharing experiences, with more mature h-trak trust users giving tips to newer users. Common themes that came through from the discussions included the importance of getting clinical engagement (often achieved by using the data as a means of proof) and accepting that a well-constructed change management process needs to be adopted.
Attendees felt that the day provided them with a platform to think ‘out of the box’ and broaden their minds to the features and functions that they might need in the future.
