King’s Lynn Queen Elizabeth Hospital maternity unit awarded £103,000 to improve digital services
The maternity unit at Lynn's Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) has been awarded just over £103,000 to improve its digital maternity services.
This money, given to the Trust from the NHS Digital Maturity Fund, will help to deliver an enhanced experience for maternity service users and staff. Digital tools are one of the ways the Trust can improve safety, improve reporting, and share information with pregnant people and their families so they can feel more supported throughout their pregnancy and maternity journey.
QEH has a ‘paper light Maternity Information System (MIS)’ which delivers safer, personalised care by allowing women and birthing people to access their care records via a patient portal on their smart phone, enabling them to read accurate information about pregnancy and get critical reminders about screening, immunisations, and appointments.
It was identified that existing hardware was in need of modernisation and upgrade to ensure full access to all new features and technologies available within QEH's electronic patient record.
Situated at the heart of the community is the recently opened midwifery hub – The Juniper Hub – which currently relies on third party connections to allow access to clinical systems and was in need of improvement due to unpredictable connectivity.
By successfully being granted funds from the Digital Maternity Fund has enabled the hospital to update existing hardware, ensuring its clinical teams have access to the most up to date technologies and also more importantly can access clinical systems through secure connectivity improving the experience for colleagues and service users.
Dr Peter-Marc Fortune, clinical SRO at NHSEI Digital Child Health and Maternity Programme, said: “We have seen some excellent examples of regional and local collaboration in the bids received. We want funds to be used for maximum impact and to address some of the inequalities at local level.”
Jules Gudgeon, national digital midwife lead for maternity at NHS England and Improvement, added: “With this funding we are one step closer to interoperable record sharing, regardless of location or system used, for the benefit of women and pregnant people and the clinicians caring for them.”
Amanda Price-Davey, head of midwifery at QEH, said: “We are absolutely delighted we have been granted funds via the Digital Maternity Fund to help us make necessary improvements for our service users and colleagues. Having access to modernised technologies means we can continue to provide safe practice, improve care and empower patients and birthing people.”
