Equality and diversity in health and social care is incredibly important, but often overlooked. It should be an integral part of your service rather than a bonus or benefit.
Equality means that everyone in the care setting is given equal opportunities, regardless of their background, abilities or lifestyle.
On the other hand, diversity means that differences between people should be appreciated and people’s beliefs, cultures and values should be treated with respect.
AI in healthcare is about using artificial intelligence to enable medical professionals to provide better help to patients. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is when computers perform tasks that would normally require human skills or judgement. The computer is simulating or copying human behaviour to achieve the same results.
AI can speed up tasks that have traditionally been slow and time-consuming, automating what previously was manual admin work, or identifying patterns and trends in things such as scans or patient notes to support more proactive care and often catching illnesses earlier.
Scientific advances have provided us with wearable technology for autism, helping clinicians to recognise that there’s more to be gained by personalising care and understanding that conditions or ailments may have unique elements from person to person. The same can be said for people with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD).
Thanks to better medical knowledge, autism is far more identifiable amongst children, meaning better support through the developmental years. There’s still much to be done though, and the biggest research breakthroughs are so recent that many millennials – people aged 30s to early 40s – are finally being diagnosed as autistic or with other neurodivergent conditions. This will provide answers they have been longing for, but also will open them up to the reality that perhaps they need more support in managing day-to-day life and their wellbeing. This is where wearable devices come in as assistive technology.
In this article we will define autism and touch upon some of the surrounding context, before exploring wearable technology for autism. We will showcase autism wearables and provide a ‘best of’ list of impactful technologies or gadgets; all in the hope of helping improve the quality of life for someone with ASD or assisting loved ones and carers working with autistic individuals.
What is Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD)?
Even before Covid, 75% of nurses surveyed in 2005 identified nurse shortages led to more pressure, longer hours, decreased patient satisfaction, and for many, leaving the profession. Here is a guide on how staffing effects patient outcomes and job satisfaction to ensure the best management of your staff and the best patient outcomes.
The NHS Long Term Plan is a 10-year strategy to make sure that the NHS keeps ‘levelling up’ and maintains or improves its care output for the UK population. As part of this plan we are seeing targets set for social prescribing; an approach to care that can fit in to the NHS Long Term Plan and help the NHS to better engage with patients.
By offering a community-level support system for day-to-day life, social prescribing can support the NHS by preventing injury, illness, or the deterioration of conditions in many cases. This isn’t a new approach, but holistic care often has to take a backseat, and that needs to change if the NHS is to be the best modern healthcare service in the world.
In this article we’ll detail the specifics of what social prescribing and what the NHS Long Term Plan are, as well as their importance due to the benefits to be had by the UK public. We will also highlight how digitisation comes into play, and how modern software solutions are now very capable of enabling social prescribing to support the NHS – including our very own Access Elemental social prescribing solution.
The NHS Digital Capability Framework (DCF) is a list of requirements specifying what acute, community, mental health, ambulance and maternity providers must do in order to match the NHS England digital strategy and achieve digital maturity.
The NHS Minimum Digital Foundations are now termed the Digital Capabilities Framework and are still broadly in line with the HIMSS EMRAM level 5 framework. The requirement for every Trust to have an EPR as a pre-requisite and each EPR to meet the standards set out in the Core capabilities to facilitate the NHS to meet the Core digital capability for the Government’s levelling up agenda.
Achieving the Digital Capability Framework is a necessary step in the evolution of NHS Trusts and Integrated Care Boards (ICBs). Minimum digital foundations are the fundamental pieces of the jigsaw. NHS England’s goal is to build on the technology pre-requisites and expand to become a nationally connected healthcare ecosystem. The goal is ensuring patient engagement is at the heart of care provision, irrespective of the systems in use by that Trust. The big challenge though is that there are over 100 Core requirements within the DCF, and success means demonstrating these capabilities within each organisation.
In this article we will discuss Frontline Digitisation further, what the Digital Capabilities Framework looks like, and the benefits and challenges of digitisation. We’ll also look at the technology available to support the NHS in their mission to modernise care delivery, with specific focus on the crucial role electronic patient records (EPRs) have to play.
NHS Frontline Digitisation
Virtual wards are a hot topic in modern healthcare, with the UK government keen to roll out these alternative care opportunities across NHS trusts in England and beyond. NHS Scotland already has Hospital at Home in place, and the analysis of the results of these wards is that they can be very beneficial to care outcomes when used appropriately and for suitable patients.
In 2022, NHS England (NHSE) stated there will be a “…a two-year funded transformation programme to support the development of virtual wards, operating to standardised clinical models, across every area of England.”
In addition to this, “ICSs have been asked to deliver virtual ward capacity equivalent to 40 to 50 virtual ward ‘beds’ per 100,000 population (equivalent to the delivery of up to 24,000 virtual ward beds), by December 2023.”
At The Access Group we’re strong advocates of virtual wards. The virtual ward model of care is an important part of implementing a virtual ward, so in this article we will explain the basics – such as what virtual wards are – as well as moving onto models of care, the implementation and operation of virtual wards, and how our software solutions can help the NHS succeed.
In social care, effective communication goes beyond knowledge and expertise to incorporate every aspect of interaction and experience. Care workers need to have the ability to empathise when needed and talk about potentially complicated procedures and issues calmly. Confrontation or disagreements can happen, and the need to defuse these challenging situations is perhaps the most important use of strong communications skills in care.
We previously published an article talking about the importance of staff training in health and social care, but perhaps a more important discussion was had in an article about empowerment in health and social care. Written by my colleague Neoma Toersen, her article discusses the risks inherent from clients losing autonomy and feeling like they no longer have control. This is where effective communication comes in, and can help develop a rapport, build a connection, and allow proper discussion about the wants, wishes and needs of the person receiving care.
In this article we will assess communication in health and social care, with a particular focus on barriers of communication in health and social care and how we can overcome them – with special mention of our eLearning for care software. Our hope is that by reading this article you will have a better understanding of how to navigate not only the base level of conversation with patients or clients, but also the channels of communication and how to best go about engaging with people to make connections, gain insights, and ultimately improve their care.
What is communication in health and social care?
In a follow-up to our previous video consultation article, we wanted to expand upon our explanation of video call appointments as a healthcare concept and touch upon the reality of their usage.
There are lots of video call applications and programs in existence at present. Solutions such as Skype are a little older, whilst Zoom represents the newest generation – having exploded in popularity during the Covid-19 pandemic and social lockdowns. These are just a couple of examples, and modern healthcare has quite rightly picked up on the potential of video consultation and the wide array of software available.
In this article we will be discussing video consultation software and its purpose, as well as evaluating the available solutions on the market and comparing their functionality to see which is best overall and which have unique selling points that might suit more specific needs from healthcare providers.
After reading this, you should have a much better idea of the best online consultation app for you and your patients.
Video consultation software
A Trust Integration Engine (TIE) isn’t the most well-known of terminology but they are an important part of modern healthcare, specifically relating to digital solutions.
Integration engines are used across different industries and more common non-healthcare related engines are applications like Microsoft BizTalk. NHS Trusts, directed by NHS Digital guidelines and frameworks, use specific Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to communicate information between software. This allows for connectivity within a hospital setting, but more importantly it supports nationwide communication and coordination of care and research.
This poses a problem when you have as many solutions and tools as an organisation the size of NHS England does. Invariably you need additional support to onboard these solutions and integrate them with existing software, to ensure a smooth introduction and continual service provision. Anything less than this risks patients and their care.
In this article we will explain what healthcare integration engines are, why the NHS uses them (particularly NHS trusts in England), and how they differ from interface solutions. We’ll also expand on basics such as what an API is, and more specific information such as the HL7 requirements for these APIs. To conclude we will showcase some of the NHS Trusts using a TIE and explain why you – like the NHS – need these tools.
