Improving Primary Care through Digital

Improving Primary Care through Digital
Improving Primary Care through Digital
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How to apply

  1. Register an account.
  2. Start your entry (save it in-progress).
  3. Submit your entry to be in the running.

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As the front door to an increasingly pressured NHS, strengthening access to primary care services is an essential lever for future NHS sustainability. Patients continue to show a growing preference for convenient, personalised care closer to home, and national policy - from the drive to end the 8am scramble for appointments to the Neighbourhood Health Framework's expectations on same day access and digital-first general practice - puts digital at the centre of primary care's future. Digital-first primary care models, from online consultation and intelligent triage to the NHS App as the default channel for patient communication, are crucial in addressing these needs.

Across the country, organisations and systems are working to implement integrated care solutions that leverage digital technologies to enhance service delivery and improve patient outcomes. This award will recognise the successful development and implementation of digital projects, products or services that are improving access, independence and choice for patients, and enabling staff to optimise capacity and quality of care. Judges will be particularly interested in initiatives genuinely co-produced with staff and the communities they serve.

Eligibility

  • All NHS providers of primary care, including pharmacy, optometry, and General Practice, and systems including ICBs and PCNs
  • Evidence must relate to a project, ongoing or completed within the 2 years up until the award entry deadline.

Ambition

The challenge and context within which your project, person or organisation is set alongside your goals and targets whether quantitative or qualitative, and how this aligns with national priorities.

  • Provide a clear rationale for the digital project, product or service and the context in which this was required.
  • Explain the project aims and what strategic thinking was done before bringing technology to the table, including how the work aligns with national ambitions for access and digital-first primary care.
  • Define the intended measures of success and the steps put in place to achieve them.

Collaboration

The stakeholders' involvement in co-designing and delivering the project. How have patients, staff at all levels, communities and other parties worked together to realise the outcomes?

  • Share how all relevant staff were engaged in the design and implementation of the project, product or service.
  • Explain how patients, service users or the community were involved in the design, planning and implementation of this project, product or service.
  • Describe and provide testimonial evidence of the working relationship between the technology partner (if relevant) and the NHS organisation that enabled a genuinely co-produced product or service.

Impact

The measurable benefits delivered to patients, staff, your organisation or the wider system. Provide data and evidence showing improvements to outcomes, quality, access, equity or efficiency.

  • Provide qualitative and quantitative evidence of improved patient access, experience and/or outcomes as a result of the digital project, product or service, with clear before-and-after comparisons.
  • Describe how the project, product or service was seamlessly developed and deployed whilst retaining any existing services to minimise disruption to patients and staff.
  • Share any financial impacts of implementation, including evidence relating to value for money and/or efficiencies realised by the project, product or service, and how the staff experience has improved.

Scale

How your work has been shared, adopted or replicated beyond your immediate team or organisation. This includes dissemination through publications, presentations, toolkits, partnerships or inspiring similar initiatives elsewhere.

  • Describe, and if possible evidence, how the learnings from the project or product/service development have been shared across and beyond your organisation or system, including across practices, PCNs or neighbourhoods.
  • Provide evidence of adoption or replication beyond your immediate organisation.
  • Discuss the scope for further replication or scaling up of this project, product or service in other settings.

Sustainability

The potential for the project/work to continue and create lasting impact. Evidence of how it can be sustained or built upon.

  • Discuss how this digital project has provided a boost to the wider mission to bring care closer to home across the system, and how it will achieve lasting impact.
  • Explain how the work is being embedded into business as usual, and what resource or funding is in place to sustain it.
  • Describe your plans for sustaining and building on the work as primary care and neighbourhood health models evolve.

Improving Primary Care through Digital

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To find out more

Partnership opportunities:  Sponsorship Sales Team
Awards entry enquiries: Support Team
Judging and event management: Awards Support