East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust Embraces Digital Communication Upgrade
In a significant move towards enhancing digital communication within medical facilities, the East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust has disclosed its plans to transition from its traditional bleeps system to a modern messaging application known as Alertive by the end of 2024. This decision was highlighted in the trust’s board meeting agenda slated for 1 May 2024, which indicated an impending shift in the communication paradigm for the trust’s medical staff.
The trust’s spokesperson shared with Digital Health News that Alertive has been tailored specifically for healthcare professionals, offering a contemporary alternative to the bleeps system that has been a mainstay since the 1950s. Mark Stanton, the Chief Information Officer at the trust, elaborated that while bleeps were once the epitome of efficient emergency communication, the leaps made in technology have paved the way for more advanced solutions.
Stanton explained that Alertive will enable clinicians to dispatch urgent notifications replete with detailed patient information—a significant enhancement over the limited capacity of the traditional bleep system. The trust anticipates a notable improvement in staff communication, fostering a more synergized approach to patient care through the app’s heightened clarity and conciseness in messaging among teams and departments.
Statistics from the Alertive website suggest a compelling need for change, noting that nearly a quarter of bleeps interrupt critical clinical tasks, adding to the urgency without providing immediate context for the alert. Alertive’s robust communication features, which include critical alerts, messaging, task sharing, and attachments, promise to offer a more transparent and efficient way of prioritizing and improving interactions among staff.
The initiative follows in the footsteps of Somerset NHS Foundation Trust, which, in 2021, launched an out-of-hours project utilizing a task management solution from Infinity Health. This innovation led to a significant reduction in non-emergency bleeps during night-time hours, amounting to over 13,400 fewer bleeps annually.
With this technological upgrade, East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust is poised to revolutionize the way its medical team communicates, ultimately aiming to elevate the quality of patient care through the power of digital transformation.
