Improving Urgent and Emergency Care through Digital 

Improving Urgent and Emergency Care through Digital
Improving Urgent and Emergency Care through Digital 
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  2. Start your entry (save it in-progress).
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Robust urgent and emergency care requires a well-coordinated approach that integrates multiple resources beyond traditional A&E departments. This includes leveraging digital solutions, NHS 111, paramedic services, urgent care centres, GP practices, and pharmacies to ensure patients receive timely care. With persistent pressures on A&E services, NHS organisations are implementing the national 10-point Urgent and Emergency Care (UEC) recovery plan, aiming for at least 78% of patients to be seen within four hours by March 2025. Employing various digital tools and technologies can enhance operational efficiency within urgent and emergency care.

This award recognises projects that are digitally enabling a 24/7 integrated urgent and emergency care service. Judges are looking for innovative and, ideally, system-wide solutions that will help build capacity, improve access and reduce wait times for patients, ensuring they get the right help, in the right place at the right time.

Eligibility

  • All NHS organisations including 111 providers, acute and ambulance trusts, General Practice, pharmacy and dentistry organisations.
  • 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 or service and the context in which this was required - what were the project aims, and what strategic thinking was done before bringing technology to the table?
  • Define the intended measures of success and the steps put in place to achieve them, including how the work supports the shift towards a digital-first urgent and emergency care model.
  • Discuss how the risks of exclusion or exacerbating inequalities were considered in the design and development of the project or service, and mitigations were put in place.

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 and clinicians were engaged in the design and implementation of the project, product or service, including across organisational boundaries where system-wide working was required.
  • Explain how patients, families and 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 reduced wait times for patients, improved experience and/or improved outcomes as a result of the project, with clear before-and-after comparisons against performance targets.
  • Discuss how this digital project has positively impacted inappropriate A&E attendance, patient flow and/or ambulance handover, and describe how it was deployed whilst retaining existing services to minimise disruption.
  • Share any financial impacts of implementation, including evidence relating to value for money and/or efficiencies realised by the project or service, and the impact on staff.

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.
  • Provide evidence of adoption or replication across sites, organisations or systems - judges are particularly interested in initiatives that have crossed organisational boundaries.
  • 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.

  • Explain how the solution is being embedded into business as usual, and what resource or funding is in place to sustain it.
  • Discuss how this work contributes to the longer-term transformation of urgent and emergency care, including reducing pressure on emergency departments over time.
  • Describe your plans for sustaining and building on this work.

Improving Urgent and Emergency Care through Digital 

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