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Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust use video

Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust improves delivery of care to elderly and vulnerable patients through innovative use of video technology.

Cloud-based video collaboration technology improves care to vulnerable people in nursing homes, providing quick access to specialist practitioners without the need to travel in order to attend hospital out-patient appointments or waiting for a home visit to be arranged.

London, UK – 26 May 2015: Elderly and vulnerable people in nursing homes across Lancashire and South Cumbria are benefitting from an innovative and potentially life-saving Video-as-a-Service (VaaS) telemedicine solution, which has been successfully trialled by Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, thanks to state-of-the-art technology from Polycom Inc. and IT services specialist Imerja.

Swallowing difficulties (dysphagia) are common amongst people that have experienced significant neurological illness, stroke or other age related disease. It can also be a reliable indicator of more serious issues, such as likely onset of pneumonia, malnutrition or poor rehabilitation, resulting in an increase length of hospital stay and a reduction in quality of life for the patient.

Patients with access to a swallowing assessment by a qualified speech and language therapist (SLT) have a more positive outcome. Prompt attention can avoid deterioration in health and subsequent admission to hospital. However, with limited trained SLT resources available to carry out the assessments, patients may have to wait for a hospital appointment or home visit to be seen by a qualified professional.

This can mean that by the time a patient is seen their swallowing difficulties may have deteriorated further, which typically results in a decrease in their levels of alertness; an increase in their state of confusion; a requirement of alternative feeding; development of a chest infection and in some cases can result in the patient being medically unfit to travel to the acute care setting. Faced with this challenge, the SLT Team based at Blackpool Victoria Hospital looked at alternative ways of effectively delivering assessments using technology, resulting in the creation of the teleswallowing service.

Initially funded by North West IT Innovations Programme award scheme, and subsequently the NHS England Regional Innovation Fund, the service is based on the video-as-a-service offering from Polycom, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM), the global leader in video, voice and content collaboration solutions managed and maintained by Imerja; a certified Polycom Gold partner and a specialist public sector IT service provider.

The VaaS offering delivers all the benefits of the Polycom® RealPresence® Platform without the on-premises setup, deployment and operational costs, giving organisations like the NHS the flexibility and scalability they need to tailor a solution for their unique needs.

Veronica Southern, Clinical Lead on the teleswallowing project, has been delighted by the success of the service, which is the result of collaborative working between multiple parties.

“We work in collaboration with our colleagues in the nursing homes to be able to access patients more rapidly - and try to help them before they deteriorate too far and have to be brought into hospital - meaning we can use the time saved for other things such as delivering more intensive therapy for people on the stroke unit.” commented Southern.

“Not only does this project deliver a modern approach to swallowing assessment, it also can delivery potentially high cost efficiencies.”

Dr. Elizabeth Boaden, a specialist treating elderly patients with swallowing disorders, agrees. She believes the teleswallowing service could provide the wider NHS with significant cost savings, and mentions avoiding the stress of travel for patients attending a hospital visit, reducing the need for hospital admission, and providing a positive outcome for the patient if symptoms are identified and treated quickly.

“The system is brilliant for staff and patients alike,” said Dr Boaden. “It keeps patients in their own homes, saving them the discomfort or distress of coming to hospital and has released capacity for speech and language therapists. Using the Polycom solution we’re now able to undertake a teleswallow assessment in about 30 minutes compared to an hour and a half when we had to travel to meet patients.”

Dr Boaden also said that Imerja was chosen to provide technical support because the trust needed to be confident the project would work efficiently, whilst Polycom provide the clarity of sound and display high quality image making the assessment as if we were in the same room with the patient.

“The Blackpool SLT department working with its technology partners has demonstrated teleswallowing can be delivered to all patients regardless of cognitive state in a UK setting and by NHS therapists.”

The expertise gained and clinical leadership demonstrated in this project can be used to extend the concept of teleconsultation to other therapy professions. Discussions around the use of video technology to enable remote assessment and treatment in podiatry and dermatology have already begun, and other clinical disciplines are looking to get engaged.

Southern continues: “This approach is aligned to the focus on contemporary service delivery and adheres to the NHS 5 Year Forward View vision, stating the contribution the NHS can make to the health of the nation and the transformation needed to meet the needs of current and future patients. This is an opportunity for the NHS to modernise. By harnessing technology to provide different care models, one being tele solutions, services can be accessed quicker by the sick and vulnerable, and delivered faster by healthcare professionals, enabling a more effective use of our scarce clinical resources.”

Telemedicine is of increasing importance to both national and international government.

The previous coalition government estimated that telehealth could result in a 20% reduction in emergency admissions, a 15% reduction in accident and emergency (A&E) visits and a 45% reduction in mortality. In addition, Jeremy Hunt set the target of three million people being able to benefit from telehealth by 2017.

In its 2015 election manifesto the Conservative Party promised to enforce the new access and waiting time standards for people experiencing mental ill-health, including children and young people. As Jeremy Hunt continues in his role as Health Secretary, telemedicine could play a key role in putting this policy into practice.

In January 2015, the European Commission published the results of its 2014 consultation “Mobile Health in the EU” which found that greater emphasis should be put on actions to promote open standards, like those used in Polycom solutions.

With over five thousand registered nursing homes in the UK, and an anticipated exponential increase in the geriatric population in the future, it is inevitable that delivery of health care will require a different approach. Telemedicine is a fast growing area of innovation in healthcare, and the use of managed solutions like the teleswallowing service offer a proven way to improve delivery and outcomes whilst reducing costs.

About Blackpool Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust serves a population of approximately 440,000 residents across Blackpool, Fylde, Wyre and North Lancashire and 12 million visitors to the area annually. The Trust comprises Blackpool Victoria Hospital which is a large busy acute hospital and two smaller community hospitals, Clifton Hospital and Fleetwood Hospital. The Trust is also responsible for the provision of Adult Community services to a large geographical area, extending from Lytham St Annes in the South as far North as Forton. The preponderance of elderly population within the area places a significant health care burden on the Trust, requiring specialist teams with the right skill mix to meet the complex demands of this group. The Trust employ more than 6,000 staff serving 830 beds across all sites and more than 56,000 day-case and inpatients, 250,000 outpatients and over 91,000 Accident and Emergency patients every year.

For further information visit: http://www.bfwh.nhs.uk

About Polycom

Polycom helps organisations unleash the power of human collaboration. More than 415,000 companies and institutions worldwide defy distance with secure video, voice and content solutions from Polycom to increase productivity, speed time to market, provide better customer service, expand education and save lives. Polycom and its global partner ecosystem provide flexible collaboration solutions for any environment that deliver the best user experience, enterprise-grade solutions, the broadest multi-vendor integration and customer choice. Visit www.polycom.co.uk or connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to learn more.

For further information please contact

Polycom

Sarah Lloyd / Lisa Perry / Sonal Bisht

EMEA Communications

Sarah.Lloyd@Polycom.com / lisa.perry@Polycom.com / sonal.bisht@polycom.com

© 2015 Polycom, Inc. All rights reserved. POLYCOM®, the Polycom logo, and the names and marks associated with Polycom’s products are trademarks and/or service marks of Polycom, Inc. and are registered and/or common law marks in the United States and various other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

About Imerja

Imerja is a specialist IT service provider to healthcare organisations. ISO certified and an approved N3 supplier, Imerja works alongside customers to develop innovative projects that challenge the status-quo of service delivery, improving the way clinical and non-clinical services are provided. Imerja’s award winning Video-as-a-Service (VaaS) solution offers a reliable and secure cloud based high definition video service built on Polycom infrastructure, enabling clinicians and others to meet, consult, assess and diagnose from any location, delivering the highest level of care.

Visit www.imerja.com, email vaas@imerja.com, or follow Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Lisa Perry .