Webinar - Creating a safer care environment: a data-driven approach

On the third day of HTN Digital Week June 2020 it was Radar Healthcare’s turn to host a live webinar to discuss the power of data in a crisis, and how having a centralised approach to data can support critical decision making, by giving you more control and visibility across your organisation.

Terry Murphy, Radar Healthcare’s National Business Development Manager, began by running through the fundamentals of a digital system, touching on how now more than ever, with the COVID-19 crisis, we can agree that tech helps us all at some point. He then went on to explain what a system like Radar Healthcare can provide, outlining how Radar Healthcare supported ERS Medical when they were aware that their current systems did not provide the required outcomes. Radar Healthcare improved transparency by supporting ERS to plan and manage issues, digitally transforming their systems and providing continuous improvement to ERS following system implementation.

Molly Kent, also a National Business Development Manager for Radar Healthcare, then took over to begin a discussion around how we can prepare for the ‘new normal’ using data to improve patient and staff safety. “We need to have watertight tech in place. We shift the focus from reactive to proactive for organisations we work with. A system needs to be configured to look at all data within an organisation to then go on and action solutions based on that data.” Molly then went on to explain how the key to compliance and measuring outcomes is a seamless flow across each iteration of quality and compliance management, and also a platform to share and evidence learning outcomes.

One of the key messages throughout the webinar was realising how important data is – but more importantly how it can support your organisations to make decisions and drive change. Molly explained that ultimately it’s about not having masses of data that needs human intervention from a team of analysts to make sense of it and create actions off the back of it, usually when it’s too late – it’s imperative to use a system to actually drive that change. Radar Healthcare allows access to real-time operational data, to provide control and visibility to enable steps to be taken in improving quality of care.

Molly then went on to explain how this data can influence service improvement and create a safer care environment – including the importance of centralising any incidents and risks which involve patient harm, reputational damage or financial loss as well as how to create a standardised approach to quality and compliance. The presentation ended with summarising how adopting a digital system to manage operational processes and procedures can have huge efficiency and financial benefits also.

The floor was then opened to some great questions from the audience:

When you mentioned data driven events in your demo – can the system drive events and actions from devices such as the Internet of Things, or monitoring medicine storage or patient monitoring?

The whole premise of Radar Healthcare is joining up the dots and removing the need for human intervention with things like analytics, and this ethos absolutely applies to the Internet of Things and other data driven devices. So, using the example of monitoring medicine storage – the view within Radar Healthcare is to have an event which will be triggered to, for example, monitor the temperature of the fridge. This will then actually speak to the thermometer in that fridge and the information will fed directly into Radar Healthcare. And then it goes a step further – rather than just inputting the information and leaving it there, the system will recognise whether a normal or abnormal value has been entered, and it will drive actions off the back of it.

Is this an incident and risk management system or an EPR? And what is it mostly used as – the main system for patient data or a subsidiary system to an EPR?

Radar Healthcare does cover incident and risk management, and anything in your environment that requires a quality and compliance – it’s not an EPR but does facilitate interoperability with other systems, including patient records.

Radar Healthcare underpins every iteration of quality and compliance management – whether it be workforce compliance through to incident risk and audits. Everything is underpinned by that analytics engine. Where its appropriate and where you need to bring in extra information, for example, inputting information about patient numbers or staff numbers – we’ve got an API so you can drive that information. The whole view is it’s a very easy to use system, and all the information you need to make quality decisions and interventions is available at the point of care.

I’m wondering how configurable Radar Healthcare is – i.e. how easy does it fit individual organisations’ systems and processes?

Radar Healthcare isn’t typically an off the shelf software solution – there is an option to purchase a licence for a ‘standard’ implementation, but usually it’s bespoke and personalised to your organisational needs. For larger organisations, we take a consultative approach – so we don’t just give you Radar Healthcare, we want to know why you’re changing and why you feel the need to have a system such as ours. We want to know where you are now, and where you’re going – these are the kinds of questions we go through to make sure that Radar Healthcare is the right fit for your organisation.

How does AI work – how intelligent can data really be without spending loads of time looking at it?

You can view the full webinar recording here.

Radar Healthcare

Quality and compliance focused software that helps improve the delivery of health and social care, whilst helping you evidence effectiveness and continuous improvement. We know you aspire to be outstanding, so we help simplify the regulatory complexities you face, giving you more time to focus on delivering excellent care. Want to know more? Get in touch with us today, or book a demo of our software.