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Q Exchange

Healthcare Quality Assurance/Project Management Intranet

To develop a software system that helps support and embed a culture of quality improvement across NHS organisations. A mock up can be seen in the cover image.

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  • Idea
  • 2018

Meet the team: #QIintranet

Also:

  • William Hogge, Business Development - Software (Labman Automation)
  • Paul Chilton, Senior Project Engineer (Labman Automation)

NHS Trust intranet systems are generally used as an information repository. There are many gaps in how these systems could be used to more effectively support NHS staff in their day-to-day tasks and duties, and identify areas for improvement and development.

 

Examples of effective quality assurance systems and processes are evident when one looks to the industrial and technological sectors. The systems are used to not only organise and allocate work but also to engender a culture of openness, transparency, critical enquiry and accountability. The NHS can and should look to learn and implement these lessons to help improve productivity and outcomes with ever decreasing resources.

 

Such a system can also help support embed a culture of quality improvement across NHS organisations. For any organisation, it is important to ensure that consideration is given to four interrelated dimensions that are necessary for implementing and sustaining successful quality improvement initiatives:

 

1.    Strategic – the conditions and processes that are strategically most important to the organisation and that offer the greatest opportunity for improvement.

2.    Cultural – the underlying beliefs, values, norms and behaviours of the organisation. A culture that fosters openness, collaboration, teamwork, and learning from mistakes appears to be optimal.

3.    Technical – the training and support systems and whether people are fully trained and have the necessary data to succeed in QI efforts.

4.    Structural – the appropriate mechanisms to facilitate learning and disseminate ‘best practices’ through an organisation.

 

Moreover, systems that can provide the practical tools and knowledge that help to drive improvement can fit into wider learning and development models such as the 70/20/10 Model. This model states that individuals obtain their knowledge:

 

  • 70% from job-related experiences

  • 20% from interactions with others

  • 10% from formal education

 

Therefore, any system that can facilitate the ability to learn, either through successes or failures, in a spirit of transparency and accountability, and without the need for formal and traditional classroom based training, could offer a wide range of benefits.

 

This project is looking for funding via the Q Exchange programme to build and test a quality assurance intranet system for NHS Trusts or other organisations. The system will be able to be tailored to each organisations needs and maintained ‘in-house’.

 

The project scope will initially seek to formalise and present the project proposal within the Q Exchange programme to receive funding to pilot and test a quality assurance intranet system. If funding is successful, the initial phase will be limited to testing the system within a chosen NHS Trust.

 

The proposed system will not seek to replace existing Trust intranet systems. It is proposed that it will be a complementary tool to existing systems. It is not proposed that any patient data or other information covered by data protection legislation will be accessible via this system.

It is not expected that the scope for the requirements for this project will be adversely affected by existing IT, governance and other legal regulations.

  • An outline of the proposed quality assurance intranet system. This will include:

    • Dashboard  – overview of projects, metrics and data (real-time and/or historic)

    • Planning – shared calendar, training, project milestones

    • Operational – project details including aims, objectives, timelines, progress, risk/issues logs, outcomes, idea logs, etc.

    • Internal Resources – shared documents and SOPs, Wiki page for knowledge transfer

 

 

 

 

How you can contribute

  • To review the idea and to offer feedback which can help us further think about the challenges and opportunities of such a system within the NHS.
  • Would a system like this be beneficial to you? How would you use such a system?

Further information

LABMAN Intranet Screen Grabs (PDF, 1MB)

Comments

  1. Love that someone from a CRN is involved in QI and contributing, how brilliant. At the Solent Academy of Research & Improvement (www.academy.solent.nhs.uk). we have an integrated approach to research, QI, innovation etc... we are working on integrated reports but a live QI dashboard would be amazing.

    I guess my question is how could organisations with other intranet platforms use it? We'd be interested..

    Sarah

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