London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust (LNWH) found itself at the epicentre of the fight against coronavirus early on. The Trust size, the expertise of its infectious diseases unit and its location saw it treat some of the first confirmed patients, and it has since continued to care for many hundreds of patients.
As the Trust started to shut its doors to visitors, it became clear that one of the many challenges patients and clinicians and staff faced was the lack of communication – between patients and loved ones, and clinicians and loved ones. With personal devices not allowed on wards, patients were left with no way to communicate.
They needed to find a way to reduce the emotional stress on patients and families and the pressure on ward nurses for keeping families updated.
On 14 April 2020, Sonia Patel, at the time joint CIO at LNWH and Hillingdon Hospitals Foundation Trust, now CIO at NHSX began looking for suitable solutions. Quickly she became frustrated by the few commercial products available – mostly existing software repackaged and offered for free, lacking core functionality to meet connectivity and logistical demands and with no information about the future costs and licensing fees.
Sonia decided that she needed to go out to the SME market to find a small-scale custom solution, that could be built and delivered quickly – allowing patients to start utilising virtual visits as quickly as possible.
We responded to Sonia’s plea for help on Twitter, pulled a team together and began work on the solution on the very day we first spoke to Sonia and her team.
From that very first conversation we based the solution on three core principles;
- We wanted to create a best in show NHS branded application
- We would make it open source
- And we would build a very minimal application
NHS Book a virtual visit
The solution needed to be able to schedule a visit between a patient in a ward with a loved one. It needed to provide a seamless experience that didn’t ask for much data from either side. It needed to work on ward Wi-Fi, and potentially on a lot of different devices. It needed to be simple for both patients and clinical and Ward staff to use, quickly so it took minimal time to set it up. And, crucially we needed to make it a secure solution that only kept personal data for as long as it was needed once the call had expired.
NHS Book a virtual visit is a simple to use digital service that enables ward staff to easily and quickly book in visits between a patient and the loved one, with minimal data needed to support the call. Hosted in the cloud and created within the principles of open source and to GDS and NHS Digital standards, the secure and OS agnostic solution does not require users to install any third-party applications, can be accessed via any website browser, and works across all devices.
Ward staff input the loved ones’ details into the service which automatically sends an SMS to them, stating when their virtual visit is booked for. The loved one will then receive a unique link to join the visit when the ward staff and patient is ready. If the visit has to be postponed due to unforeseen circumstances, staff can easily rebook visits and send notifications. Ward staff can also easily book a follow up visit for a future data without having to input all the details again, reducing the burden on staff having to do this manually, allowing them to spend more time caring for patients and less time administering virtual visits.
Delivering a new solution in 48 hours
The alpha product was delivered in 48 hours, and two weeks later NHS Book a virtual visit was on wards being used by patients and clinicians. To date over 3,000 virtual visits have been made across every hospital ward in the Trust. This includes non-COVID-19 wards with COVID-19 positive parents in neonatal wards utilising the service to remain connected to their babies after being separated due to infection risk.
Chaplaincy services are also using the NHS Book a virtual visit app to provide spiritual
and pastoral support to patients, while working within the guidance on physical distancing
and infection control.
As the Trust emerges from the grip of the pandemic, it plans to continue to make the solution available to those that need it, including where WIFI calling is available to connect patients with loved ones overseas.
Our team has been working with other NHS trusts across the country and has been speaking with NHSX to ensure NHS Book a virtual visit can have a large positive impact on patients, their loved ones, and NHS staff.
Sonia Patel, joint CIO of London North West Healthcare NHS Trust and The Hillingdon Hospitals Foundation Trust said: “Connecting loved ones with virtual visits at this time is incredibly important. I want our patients to have access to the support they need, and for our ward staff to have a solution that is intuitive to use and allows them to spend more time caring for their patients, in extremely challenging circumstances. Thank you Made Tech for standing up an alpha app within 48 hours.”