Andrew Smith explains how Objectivity’s partnerships with the NHS are designed to accelerate innovation and support organisations to realise and scale innovation from concept to regional delivery.
Objectivity is proud to partner with the NHS on a range of projects, from developing user-led service design for remote patient monitoring, to supporting data migration and integration programmes across regions. Because we are a solutions provider, not a product company, we are able to work across a broad and diverse portfolio of projects. We are technically agnostic, meaning we’re able to draw upon our deep resources across consulting, development, and data expertise that supports the NHS to identify, deliver, and scale innovation.
Our NHS partners operate within a complex system, and it is clear that there is both the desire and the need for innovation, whether this be to enhance patient care, manage increasing demand, tackle cost pressures or health inequalities. By fostering a culture of innovation, the NHS can adapt to evolving healthcare needs, drive improvements in healthcare delivery, and ultimately provide better outcomes for patients. Below, are some examples of how Objectivity, working in partnership with the NHS, has accelerated innovation and supported our partners to realise and scale innovation from concept to regional delivery.
Enabling earlier discharge of young people following heart surgery with Alder Hey Innovation
We worked with Alder Hey Innovation to apply for funding from NHS Digital to support the digitisation of their “Little Hearts at Home” service. Objectivity employed user-led design to create a new technology platform for Alder Hey Children’s Hospital that supports children and young babies to be looked after at home following surgery. This application, called “Little Hearts at Home”, allows children’s vital stats to be submitted remotely to a clinical monitoring team at Alder Hey.
The model is now being deployed to other sites across the North West and more than 190 community staff are able to utilise the platform. Importantly, this has increased productivity through the reduction in home monitoring phone calls by about 80 per cent and it has reduced the need for emergency admissions. The parents of children within the service have been overwhelmingly supportive, even hitting the national TV news.
Supporting smoking cessation in pregnancy with Health Innovation Manchester
Supporting people in giving up smoking during pregnancy significantly improves health outcomes for both parent and child. The rates of people smoking during pregnancy in Greater Manchester were greater than the national average. To tackle this, Objectivity was approached to support the design of a more tailored service and technology platform to support pregnant individuals in giving up smoking.
The project “Smokefree Pregnancy” was funded by Health Innovation Manchester. The Objectivity team engaged with community midwives, end users (pregnant people) and other staff at Greater Manchester Combined Authority to develop patient profiles so midwives could record information on patient demographics, which are linked to calendars to support the scheduling of visits. Health Status Indicators were developed to monitor indicators for real-time data reporting dashboards. Email and SMS notifications were generated to support attendance and deliver motivational messages encouraging the end user to quit smoking. Given the community aspect of the service, the system has offline capability, making the application convenient and easy to use when there is a lack of Wi-Fi connection, which is common in some rural areas.
Helping Greater Manchester Combined Authority combine systems into a single Early Years app
Objectivity supported GMCA with the Early Years app, which is an award-winning digital application for parents and carers across Greater Manchester. The app empowers users by giving them more control and access to their own data. It replaced the current paper-based assessments and is transforming the way health information is delivered and shared in Greater Manchester. The app means that paper-based assessments used to review a child’s development are now digitised, allowing parents and carers to efficiently complete the assessments online and access their records.
Objectivity merged and streamlined systems connecting hundreds of professionals, from health visitors and school health services to parents and carers. With our user-led design, it supports better collaboration across the platform and is the first part of a larger digital platform that supported integrated, user-friendly services for Manchester.
Improving data for decision-making with Arden GEM CSU
The Objectivity team validated and configured a common data model and a dataset for collecting information from all existing systems. The data model additionally, retrieved data from multiple on-premises SQL databases. Building from this dataset, the team also delivered 20 specific, dynamic dashboards for the client’s Management Information Reporting.
Conclusion
We have many more examples where Objectivity has partnered with the NHS. Our partnership success is also bolstered by ensuring that the Intellectual Property of our technology and software remains with our NHS partners. Because we are solutions-driven, we can provide a flexible service focused on providing brilliant people in data, delivery, and consulting with deep domain experience working within health and social care to drive innovation forward. We are guided by the Quadruple Aim of Healthcare which allows for the structure of overall goals, metrics, and incentives to be aligned and shared, representing the systems within which we operate.
Objectivity is proud of its heritage. For more than 30 years we have worked hard to build our focus on excellence and flexible delivery. We are close to our clients and with the expertise of our domain experts, we are able to understand and address clients’ needs. Our leadership team has worked with and for the NHS and our Healthcare Advisory Board ensures that we are well-aligned with the strategic objectives, culture, and systems within the NHS and social care. We are delighted that these sustainable, mutually supportive partnerships have been a contributing factor in the recent exciting development of Objectivity having been acquired by Accenture. Becoming part of the Accenture family means that we will be able to continue the great work we have been doing, whilst providing even more support and opportunities for our friends and partners in the NHS.
The Objectivity team will be joined by some of our NHS partners at NHS Confed Expo in Manchester on 14-15 June to showcase some of our successes. Please come along and see us at stand D19.
