Industry: Healthcare
Region: U.K.
HQ: Birmingham
“KIDS is delighted to have had the opportunity to work with Unify to develop and implement the Atos Unify OpenScape Xpert platform. The additional flexibility and utility of this system allows the clinical staff to be transferred between calls, to leave and rejoin, and allows the KIDS operator to create and deconstruct conferences whilst still holding individual personnel on the console. This allows expert medical staff and other key personnel to be maneuvered into and out of whichever call they are needed, so that more than one case and complex discussions can take place simultaneously. The touchscreen console is easy to use, the call handling environment is clearly visualised facilitating logical and intuitive conference call management.”
Phil Wilson, KIDS Lead Nurse,
Birmingham Children’s Hospital
See how Birmingham Children’s Hospital deployed Atos Unify’s OpenScape Xpert to streamline clinical decision processes
Birmingham Children’s Hospital provides a wide range of children’s health services for young patients from Birmingham the West Midlands and beyond, with over 240,000 patient visits every year. The city-centre specialist hospital is home to the largest single pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) in the UK and cares for over 1,000 critically ill babies, children and young people every year.
The Kids Intensive Care and Decision Support (KIDS) service operates from the hospital and provides urgently needed assistance to clinicians in hospitals across the West Midlands who are treating critically ill babies, children and young people.
The challenge
As the KIDS advice and transport service grew it moved to a new location adjacent to the hospital and took the opportunity to redesign its communications infrastructure. KIDS runs a 24-hour operations centre and requires an efficient and reliable system that would enhance logistical and clinical decision making for the KIDS team, bringing together the right doctors and nurses and other specialists in a timely manner.
The solution
The Atos Unify OpenScape Xpert system brings together the right doctors, nurses and specialists for the 1600 acute referrals which are received each year. Triaged by a pediatric intensivist, it facilitates timely dispatch of the transport team and allows efficient communication between the team and other specialists involved in the case. The system was designed to improve logistical and clinical decision making for the KIDS team, the result of a successful collaborative partnership between clinical and IT staff.
Business benefit
The Xpert system was the first European healthcare deployment of its kind and, as a result, the staff have seen improved call management for pediatric intensive care advice and transport. The system allows more callers within a single conference than was previously possible and multiple cases can be handled simultaneously. By improving referral call management and conference call efficiency, KIDS is streamlining the decision-making process, delivery of remote expertise and transport coordination for critically ill babies, children and young people across the region.
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