S1: EP 013: Innovation across health and social care - utilising technology and data to drive change
Download MP3Hi, What the HealthTech listeners. I'm your host today, Paul Johnson, and I'm joined again by Mark Fewster. If you haven't had a chance, please listen to episode 8, where we discuss various things and outcomes from a round table session. Mark's background, is across product development, product realization, how to solve problems in the real business world. Outside of work, keen traveler.
Paul Johnson:Books, music, films, gaming.
Mark Fewster:Don't forget the bird watching.
Paul Johnson:And the bird watching. Welcome, Mark. Thank you, Paul. Before we start
Mark Fewster:Mhmm.
Paul Johnson:Tell me a little bit about innovation. What does that actually mean to you? We hear this word innovation from your perspective. In your both in your role and your general views on that, what does that actually mean?
Mark Fewster:Just improvements, I guess. I know people kind of, when you think of innovation, think about, you know, the massive leaps. So everybody uses that Henry Ford thing of if I'd asked my customers what they wanted, they'd have asked for a faster horse, that kind of stuff. But, for me, it's just looking to change things. And it can be small incremental changes, you know, and innovation could just be a simple change in a process somewhere.
Mark Fewster:So it's just, you know, constantly improving in some way, shape, or form. For for me, it doesn't necessarily mean you're leaping from, you know, riding on the back of a horse to driving a model t T Ford around.
Paul Johnson:And I suppose those little small changes can have the biggest impact as well,
Mark Fewster:can they? Yeah. Because they they stack up.
Paul Johnson:Yeah. And and certainly with health and social care, there's there's so many gains to be had. Yeah. So much low hanging fruit. There's, there's an infographic that I I used to use about innovation, and, it was the 2 guys pushing the wheelbarrow up the hill with square wheels Yep.
Paul Johnson:And the guys at the side of the road selling, round wheels. Yep. Sorry. We're too busy. Yeah.
Paul Johnson:Absolutely. I think that's a great, you know, example of that. Tell me a little bit about the the kind of project that you're looking to do with Innovate UK. What's all that about? And what's, you know, what's the driver and the objectives of that project?
Mark Fewster:Okay. So to kinda start with, I'm also aware of Radar works is we're almost like a workflow engine if you like. So if you think of think of the types of customers we've got in the minute, I'm gonna pick a care home for ease of explaining. So that care home might have, lots of things happening. You know, we might have falls, different types of incidents, complaints, compliments.
Mark Fewster:What Reda is doing is it's taking those as an import then typically, basically, digitizing wherever their business processes when one of those things happen. So if in in the event of a fall, our policy says we do x y and zed, red eye will take that, we'll digitize digitize that process. And then obviously the outputs of action plans and learning improvements and all that kind of good stuff. The IUK thing is almost taking that away from just being kind of a human input and saying, well, actually the risk and the thing the business processes, if you like, aren't necessarily always driven by a human being. They could be driven by all sorts of different areas.
Mark Fewster:They could be driven by, devices. So, I'm gonna say IOT, so Internet of Things. So it could be a wearable. It could be a pharmacy fridge. It could be driven by a piece of information, within our system or within another system, or they could be driven from another system itself.
Mark Fewster:So the the idea behind the innovation is we we move away from risk management just being about kind of humans for a better way of describing them, putting things into a system, and expand that out into almost like the bigger ecosystem. You know, we're bringing in data driven events, device driven events. And then it's the same thinking of, well, actually behind that, there's a business there's a there's a process that you want to happen when one of these things occurs. So for example, your pharmacy fridge breaks down, your process might be we need somebody to go and check that the medicine's kind of alright, still in date, or dispose of it properly, or get the facilities guys to go out and fix it. So it it's that.
Mark Fewster:It's expanding it from just being a human element into almost like a digital one for one better way of explaining it.
Paul Johnson:So in simple terms, Radar Healthcare is going to monitor what's happening, to automate a response. Yeah.
Mark Fewster:Yeah. And that response can be whatever your, as I say, whatever your business processes or your your your policy probably dictates, it it would be.
Paul Johnson:And then that that technology and that innovation, I'm guessing, can be expanded. You know, I'm go going back to a previous episode, but we were talking about lots of data and how you can stop people getting in the hospital. Is that
Mark Fewster:that apply? The the the first step is almost what happens when something goes wrong. So if we let's say the pharmacy fridge example again, something went wrong, you're gonna go, you're gonna check the medicines within that fridge, you might replace the fridge, get the facilities guys to go, so you've got a bunch of actions that you've taken because this thing has broken down for some reason. The data might be able to tell you before it breaks down that it's going to break down, so you can go off and you can, you know, intervene earlier to prevent the thing breaking down. From a patient point of view, you could be talking about a wearable where the, you know, the the device said somebody fell over or, you know, they had a something happened, basically, and then you followed whatever process it was post at.
Mark Fewster:If that device was measuring, say, kind of blood oxygen levels for for for for argument's sake, it could be predicting a week, 2 weeks before, a day before that actually this person is more of risk of falling because they've got low blood oxygen levels. So you get the opportunity to intervene so that the care is preventative rather than reactive. And I guess
Paul Johnson:you've got that cumulative impact as well that there are more falls occurring in this setting. Yeah. Therefore, we want to intervene with improvements. Yep. In terms of then, you know, partners that Radar Healthcare works with, how how do they get involved in, you know, innovation and being a part of the innovation roadmap?
Paul Johnson:How does that look?
Mark Fewster:So I mean, the fundamental to it, to be fair. So the, you know, the customers that we work with are the ones who help us generate the ideas around innovation. So we hold workshops where we kinda discuss these kind of topics, almost kind of open forum things where it's about, you know, what what what are you doing as a customer? What are you working on? What are the things that are interested in you?
Mark Fewster:So that we almost know kind of from a market point of view plus strategically where are they actually going? What are the things that they're interested in? And then if you are a provider of something like an, you know, an IoT device, then that'd be, you know, again, reach out to us, and we kinda get involved.
Paul Johnson:I suppose that just going back to a couple of, you know, where we've talked about smaller gains being achieved. Yeah. I'm just thinking their way is, you know, a fridge monitor. I mean, that's a ongoing activity that's done routinely on a daily basis.
Mark Fewster:Yeah. There'd be somebody going around with a clipboard, a piece of paper, or, you know,
Paul Johnson:best spreadsheet. Big gains to be achieved by by bringing about that. And then, in terms of we're talking roadmaps, what's what's new, exciting? What what's coming up, on on the radar healthcare roadmap?
Mark Fewster:Obviously, the bits we've just talked about in terms of that interoperability and bringing in, you know, data from other systems devices to generate workflows within radar itself. There's the kind of output of that as well, so again, the action might not necessarily be in a human being performing a task, it could be sending some information into another system that in there informs it. So it could be sending information back into electronic patient record, for argument's sake, your care planning software. So that idea of radar being this kind of workflow engine that sits in the middle of, you know, whatever the process is in that and handles that process. So you're, again, from a risk point of view, you're assured that whatever you want to happen is happening because we're managing that that bit in the middle.
Mark Fewster:So that's kind of that's kind of a big thing for us. I guess the other one for for us is is more around the analytics. So we have kind of a state of the art analytics at the minute, you can build your own dashboards. We've got things like pulse which is basically, you know, alerting best on information, AI, machine learning, all that kind of good stuff. One of the bits we want to focus on is something called, kinda, natural language query and natural language processing.
Mark Fewster:So one of the challenges, I guess, for some people around analytics is you need to understand how to read a dashboard, you would need to have you know, possibly some experience of how to, you know, interpret data to understand what a dashboard might be telling you, when actually what you really wanna do is get the answer. So, as a user, what we're trying to do is kinda democratize the access to that data, and it's about you asking a simple question of it. So you might go, well, how many falls did we have last week? And you're asking it in a natural English language way in this particular example, and then the system's going off and giving you a response to that. So you're not having to interpret graphs and charts and all that.
Mark Fewster:It's just literally, I have this is the question that I want the information to give me an answer to. So So that's gonna be a big one for us. It's about how do you democratize that data, for want of a better way of describing it. Yeah. I think that that's probably the k one.
Paul Johnson:I mean, that that that in itself just sounds super cool. Yeah.
Mark Fewster:Yeah. Yeah.
Paul Johnson:You know, not only from a user perspective, because, you know, think quite often as well you you're you're busy. And I know with my past experience and current experience, quite often I'm to draw upon certain information because I'm in a meeting, I I need information quickly. Yep. So that kind of scenario you gave, how many falls did we have last week? What's our level of patient harm?
Paul Johnson:What's how many risks have we got? So that kind of premise would apply then.
Mark Fewster:Yeah. And then tie that in with what we've already done. And instead of, instead of the instead of the data need needing to be interpreted. So, again, from a dashboard, you know, but that's the types of innovation, let's say, with our UK to actually say, well, if this thing does occur, if if, you know, if we do have a certain level of falls or something does happen, we can just automatically generate the process that we want to happen based on that information. So there's no lag between the data telling you something and you acting on it because that decision's taken because you've programmed the machine, if you like, to to to do those actions when this thing occurs.
Mark Fewster:So it it's about again, it's back to that thing of, you know, what the outcomes and the outcomes, patient safety, and to to to get to that, you want to be able to, 1, reduce the amount of time people are doing on ad mini type stuff where, you know, and you wanna reduce the time to act, so waiting for a monthly board pack to come out or somebody, you know, going off and churning away in a room somewhere trying to figure out what the information's telling you. That needs to go. It just needs to be, this is what the data is telling you. This is the action that's already taken.
Paul Johnson:Brilliant. I suppose then, you know, innovation of the art of the possible. You've got all the you've got all the goodies in the draw. You've got as much resource, capital, whatever you need, you know, so you can solve all kinds of problems. You know, where can this go?
Paul Johnson:You know, what what applying to health care, you know, what, you know, what is possible out there from an innovation perspective?
Mark Fewster:I mean, anything's possible to fair. I mean, especially if you've just given me an unlimited budget.
Paul Johnson:I haven't, by the way.
Mark Fewster:I I think health care broadly, we spoke about in the last episode, it will be about, kind of, using the the technology that's becoming available, and it will be about shifting from reactive to proactive, and that might be wearables, caring for people in their own homes, that type of thing. For us as Radar, if we if we just keep that the hat on at the minute of, you know, we're we're about kind of risk management, it would be about us actually supporting organizations as they start to utilize some of this other technology that's out there, and start to broaden that risk, and start to ensure that actually we're we're we're removing that kind of legacy admin manual, you know, task and freeing them up to focus on the things that again drive that outcome, which is we what are we gonna do differently? How are we gonna, you know, change? How are we gonna implement things that should impact on patient safety. And then Redar being the tool to allow you to understand, did this thing that I put in place make a difference or not?
Mark Fewster:And if so, what difference? Because I think, again, that's a big thing It's tough to evidence where you're doing things and doing things well and being able to kind of almost corroborate, well, this was valuable time spent and we did the right thing. Touching on some of the other things we've talked about with the NIRLS and the other podcasts, that thing of I'm able to evidence where good care had an impact, you'll then be able to take that and you'll be able to push that out into the radar community and then understand what impact it had for them as well. So, you know, this had a great great impact in trust 1. Right?
Mark Fewster:We're gonna put it into the rest of the trusts. What impact did it have there? How do we change it? How do we take the learnings we had from putting it into other trusts and feed it back in? And it's that mechanism, that loop of constantly learning and constantly changing what you're doing.
Paul Johnson:Yeah. I was I was kind of you know, when you look at sci fi, you know, how many things became a reality, and that all comes from
Mark Fewster:By no means, reports they always want for me. Yeah.
Paul Johnson:Imagines you know, if you can imagine it, then, you know, technology is can be that enabler to realize it. So so where do you see Radha Healthcare, you know, in 5, 10 years? What what does that journey look like?
Mark Fewster:I would hope we were across most of, if not all of the NHS, and, international, I think as well. So I think kinda going into the Middle East and and and North America for us, I think probably the next steps.
Paul Johnson:Brilliant. Thank you, Mark. Thank you. Thanks again this week for joining us What the HealthTech listeners. Next week, we're going to hear from Mike Taylor, CTO at Radar Healthcare, and about integration really means, why it's beneficial, and how important integrating system is for the future.
Paul Johnson:Don't forget to rate, and subscribe wherever you, get your podcasts. And if you have any questions for our guests and for Mark, then please email us on what the health tech at radarhealthcare.com. Thank you.
