HIN out and about in London

Find out what our HIN team has been up to recently, and some events we’ve taken part in or led.

Technology & Informatics

On 13 September, our T&I team visited Tameside and Glossop Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust, just outside of Manchester. They learned about an innovation set up by the hospital called Digital Health Centre aimed at reducing the number of unnecessary attendances at Tameside Hospital’s A&E department through the use of Skype. The learning pilot, which has extended the number of local care and residential homes involved, focuses on when patients within the homes become unwell, staff will have the option to Skype a dedicated registered nurse at the Trust who will be on hand to give expert advice and guidance throughout a video conversation. This has already reduced the number of attendances to A&E. The team learned about innovative techniques being used in other parts of the country, and took on board the advice provided by the team to aid some of their projects.

Musculoskeletal (MSK)

Supported by Arthritis Research UK, the MSK theme successfully organised the annual ESCAPE-pain conference which was held on 11 September as Guy’s Hospital. Sarah Ruane, Strategic Lead at Sport England to our very Innovation Fellow, Andrew Walker took to the stage to present to a full room of delegates who were keen to share best practice and ideas. Read more on the event here.

Alcohol

Paul Wallace, Clinical Director for the alcohol theme presented a paper at the International Network on Brief Interventions for Alcohol and Other Drugs Conference in New York on “Use of SMS texts for facilitating access to online alcohol interventions – a feasibility study”. This is a presentation of the pilot project undertaken with three GP practices in Kingston.