Hospital uses tracking tech to boost operations

University College London Hospitals (UCLH) NHS Foundation Trust is using technology to tracks patients' progress from referral to treatment.

The system - implemented by LogicaCMG - has been introduced in response to a government directive that calls on all NHS trusts to, by the end of March next year, treat 80 to 90 per cent of patients within 18 weeks of referral, and then all patients by December 2008.

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The system at UCLH - which is run on business process management software from Lombardi - is bolted on to existing patient data handling systems that channel information from sources such as GPs, diagnostics and pathology departments into a clinical data repository. It tracks this data to identify bottlenecks in the process, allowing clinicians to identify any patients who are waiting too long for care.

UCLH assistant director of ICT, Joan St Hill, said: "We will be able to use the system to improve the processes set up to monitor patients from referral to treatment. It will be able to show us any bottlenecks in this process and allow us to take remedial action. By next March we should have a good understanding where our patients are in the cycle."

Before the system was implemented, St Hill explained, the hospital had eight people tracking cancer patient information to make sure that referral to treatment time was no longer than 62 days - in fact there were more monitors than patients in the system. The solution allows some of these people to be redirected to other tasks.

She said: "We've run a number of scenarios through the system and we should be able to predict where bottlenecks are likely to occur before patients are affected."

UCLH will start to use the system in earnest by mid-October to meet the March deadline.