eTriage can prioritise patients upon arrival, notifying doctors of high acuity and urgent patients.
Vodafone in Health and eConsult Health, a leading digital triage and remote consultation solution provider, today announced a collaboration to help reduce patient waiting times and enhance patient safety. The collaboration intends to provide equal access to healthcare by reducing wait times and streamlining care for patients with urgent need.
eConsult Health’s digital patient triage solution, eTriage, was developed by clinicians to help NHS Emergency Departments and Urgent Treatment Centres prioritise patients upon arrival. By means of a self-registration process, eTriage collects patient comprehensive histories to facilitate early identification of sick patients and reduces the general waiting time for emergency treatment. This ensures better waiting room safety, streamlined patient pathways and improved patient satisfaction.
Underpinning this is Vodafone’s secure digital infrastructure, enabling healthcare providers to accelerate adoption of the digital platform and ensure adaptability to scale based on patient demand. eConsult’s platform and Vodafone’s reliable, award-winning network will ensure service continuity once deployed, enabling healthcare providers to reduce patient waiting times.
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Pressures are rising on the healthcare system, particularly A&E departments, and patients are waiting longer for the care they need. In December, almost 31% of people attending A&E spent more than four hours from arrival to admission, transfer or discharge. To accelerate patient flow and ease the strain on clinical resource, the collaboration aims to empower healthcare providers in safeguarding the quality of patient care and streamlining patient flow, through eConsult’s digital triage solution, connected by Vodafone.
The collaboration will bring together a unique combination of clinical and technology expertise, ensuring healthcare providers maximise their digital investment through alignment with clinical workflows and pathways, and have the right connectivity and technology foundations in place to meet their desired patient outcomes. The collaboration highlights the common goal of reducing health inequalities and democratising quick access to healthcare by removing barriers such as waiting times.
Vodafone UK’s Director of Health, Anne-Marie Vine-Lott, said “Our collaboration with eConsult is further demonstration of Vodafone’s commitment to supporting the Health sector in its priorities and challenges. eConsult’s digital triage platform has already proven its ability to lower waiting times, improve access to services and reduce strain on the NHS workforce. By joining forces, we want to scale this platform, underpinned by our technology infrastructure, ensuring a reliable performance. Vodafone’s intention is to, by working in partnership with the NHS and the private and third sectors, help develop technology solutions that support the delivery of better patient outcomes.”
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Chief Strategy Officer at eConsult, Mark Harmon, said “It’s like-minded collaborations like this that makes the goal of improving access to patient care achievable. Combining Vodafone’s secure technology with our digital eTriage tool will give A&E departments the helping hand they need to streamline ways of working and improve outcomes for patients and emergency workers. An end-to-end digital solution that automates patient prioritisation, eases triaging processes and notifies doctors of high acuity and urgent patients is essential for the NHS to meet demand and to free up precious doctor and nurse time. We’re excited to see the impact this has on our healthcare system over the coming months.”
The collaboration demonstrates Vodafone’s commitment to scaling clinical innovation through its growing eco-system of leading health partners, alleviating certain complexities associated with selection and procurement for healthcare providers. Empowering healthcare organisations to stay at the forefront of technological advancements, ensuring that patients have access to the right care, in the right place, at the right time.
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About eConsult Health
eConsult Health Limited provides the UK’s leading digital triage systems in the NHS, covering both primary and secondary care, including:
- eConsult – An award-winning online consultation platform for primary care, used by more than 2,500 GP Practices, serving over 18 million patients each year
- eTriage – A platform live on 10 NHS Emergency Departments and Urgent Treatment Centres designed to register and automatically prioritise patients upon arrival
- eSpecialist – The first outpatient care triage application which ensures that clinicians have the right information to be able to triage, manage and treat patients at the earliest point
