Liverpool Community Health (LCH) NHS Trust, UK, is piloting a new secure mailbox technology for the delivery of neonatal screening results for new born babies.
The new technology, developed in collaboration with EMIS and the Royal Liverpool University Hospital Trust, is designed to receive the results electronically, directly into the child’s record, eliminating repeated manual input by different departments or services.
Informatics Merseyside information management and technology senior project manager Peter Woods said local laboratories are usually required to post all baby screening results to the Trust for reporting purposes.
"These results were then manually input into an electronic system and provided to health visitors as a paper record, so it was a fairly inefficient process," Woods said.
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The new screening method, however, requires the data to be entered only once for each child, unlike the earlier need for multiple entries by several departments and teams.
"Not only is it enabling us to speed up our baby screening process by between two-five days on average and enabling us to get results back to families much quicker, it’s also helping to significantly reduce paperwork for key staff such as our health visitors," Woods added.
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The system is expected to decrease the risk of human error in data inputting and enable effortless audition of the records.
The Trust anticipates switching to the electronic version from January 2013, after the completion of the three month trial period intended to ensure the accuracy levels of the new system.
LCH chief executive Bernie Cuthel said: "Liverpool Community Health NHS Trust is committed to continuously innovating with our staff to enhance our systems and improve the quality and effectiveness of the healthcare services that we deliver to our communities."
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