27 January 2021

Staff working for Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust (CNWL) mental health services have utilised SystmOne’s Clinical Development Kit, producing a Medicines Dashboard to put essential information at the fingertips of staff. The dashboard, produced through the core clinical development functionality available within all SystmOne modules, has been designed to meet the specific needs of the Trust’s Mental Health Services.

Clinicians working in CNWL’s mental health services often found it difficult to access necessary patient and medication information quickly and easily during a 20-minute outpatient appointment or busy ward round, which frequently led to delays. There was also a lack of standardisation of processes and access to electronic medication charts making it difficult for staff working across different services or when patients transferred between services.

Without an e-prescribing module, it was hard for staff across primary and secondary care services to easily know what patients were on high-risk medications. Some medications are only supplied by secondary care but still needed to be known by primary care services to make well-informed decisions about patients. The onus was on individual clinicians or teams to create their own lists which was labour intensive, difficult to maintain and could not easily be shared with everyone involved in the patient’s care.

In response to these problems, Yogita Dawda, Borough Lead Pharmacist, worked with Robert Miller, SystmOne Expert, to configure the Trust’s new Medicines Dashboard on SystmOne. The Dashboard now allows clinicians to access resources such as medication charts, blood results, care plans and resources for patients and staff all in one place, saving time and ensuring patients get the well-informed care they need, wherever they may be. Thanks to SystmOne’s interoperability, the dashboard’s standardised medicine processes and lists can be used by mental health staff on SystmOne across the Trust. High-risk medicine alerts enabled through the dashboard can also be accessed by GPs on SystmOne, reducing the risk of serious medication incidents through more joined-up care.

The Medicines Dashboard has been well-received by mental health staff at CNWL, reflected in Yogita and Robert’s work being awarded first place in the Use of Technology category at CNWL’s safety awards. “As well as the advantages of having access to resources in one place which saves time and improves communication, the dashboard has supported remote working. Standardisation will allow better benchmarking and more meaningful and accurate reporting,” said Yogita, “it has also helped implement national standards requiring us to have registers of patients on high-risk medicines, thereby improving safety.”

Following on from their work, the team at CNWL mental health services are looking to further improve care by making their high-risk medicine alerts available to GPs on EMIS as well as SystmOne and sharing the dashboard with other services within the Trust. Having now secured funding for e-prescribing as well, CNWL should soon see further administrative benefits through standardised and structured medication orders which will help ensure patients receive care from staff fully informed as to their medication needs.

Taken from the TPP website.