System C has launched a new business intelligence and visualisation tool to provide NHS Trusts with the ability to analyse up-to-the-minute performance, solve problems and drive change. 

The new data visualisation software has gone live at Gateshead Health NHS Foundation Trust, known as QE Gateshead, where the Trust is using a suite of dashboards to help improve clinical, operational and financial performance.

Rob Allcock, CCIO and consultant chest physician at Gateshead, said the Trust was using Medway BI Data Visualisation to help with problem solving and creating a culture of continuous improvement.

“This approach enables us to use live information to improve the performance of the Trust”, Dr Allcock said.

“By publishing visually engaging information to clinicians and ward teams we highlight the areas with the best performance, help teams understand how to be as good as the best, and empower clinicians to make changes. With live information it becomes easy for clinical teams to see which changes produce improvement. By just shining a light on the things that matter, we improve safety, reduce delays, improve patient experience and reduce costs.”

Gateshead has worked with System C to develop of a range of reports and dashboards. These are part of a customisable library which is available, in addition to standard out-of-the-box reports, to all other Medway BI Data Visualisation users.

Dashboards and reports in use at Gateshead include:

• Live hospital status – live feeds from the patient administration system provide a view of patient flow in A&E and inpatients, with the ability to drill down into underlying patient data
• Capacity and demand analysis, measuring patient flow from referral to appointments in near-real time, to assist outpatient referrals and optimise RTT performance
• Analysis of care-completed, by ward, clinician and specialty
• Ward quality measures – such as measuring the speed with which patients are collected from theatres after an operation, analysing non-elective discharge performance across a 7-day week, monitoring by ward of GP handover performance
• Income analysis

Darryl Davies, BI product manager at System C, said: “Medway BI Data Visualisation is a key tool in supporting better operational and strategic decision-making as well as improvements in patient care. It allows customers to monitor and understand their performance in real-time, or near real-time, and to disseminate and display it electronically throughout the organisation.”

Medway BI Data Visualisation is based on the web-based BI and analytics software from Yellowfin.

Davies said a big advantage of the Yellowfin software was that it was powerful, but at the same time really easy for non-technical users such as clinicians, finance directors and chief executives.

“Useful features include the ability to take snapshots of live data and then use the built-in collaborative BI capabilities to ask colleagues for comments and explanation”, he said.

Medway BI Data Visualisation also contains a wide and powerful selection of easy to use data visualisation components, including infographics, geospatial mapping and storyboard software for presenting and sharing live BI content.

Peter Baxter, Yellowfin EMEA Managing Director said: “We’re delighted to be working with System C to deliver Medway BI. Yellowfin has a long history with a number of NHS trusts helping to deliver better patient outcomes through the application of reporting and analytics.”