DIGITAL initiatives have been introduced by the Oncology Department at Jersey General Hospital, leading to increased efficiency and the ability to provide more tailored care to cancer patients.
The work was outlined by unit manager Rachel Conway and consultant oncologist Dr Elizabet Gomes Dos Santos, who recently demonstrated the progress achieved during a visit to the Hospital by the Lieutenant-Governor.
Ms Conway said one of the key developments during 2024 had been the introduction of the BookWise scheduling system.
“Previously everything was paper-based. We literally had a ‘hairdresser’s diary’ which sat on the desk and we would allocate chemotherapy sessions for each chair,” she said.
The old system was inflexible and prone to leave facilities or nursing staff double-booked when sessions over-ran, or under-utilised if they were completed early, she said, whereas BookWise allowed a greater amount of patient data to be logged in the system and appointments to be scheduled based on individual circumstances.
“It’s really important for the nurses on the day, because then they’re not getting snowed under with work that they can’t keep on top of,” Ms Conway added. “It’s important for the patient because they’re not sitting there waiting for a chair to become available, and they know in advance what their dates are, so they can plan their life around that which is really important.”
Dr Gomes Dos Santos said the system also encouraged a joined-up approach with other departments, such as the Hospital Pharmacy, which was linked to the system in a way that was far harder under the paper-based regime and could lead to costly medication being prepared but then not used.
Treatment sessions are logged in the system, giving staff easy access to important information that helps plan the next moves for patients, a change which she said had caused a substantial drop in the number of time-consuming coding queries required.
Another important move in the digital direction, she said, was the adoption of the Somerset Cancer Register, a web application designed to collect patient data to help healthcare professionals manage a patient’s pathway, from GP referral through to end of treatment.
“The register really improves all the data we get, taking it to a different level,” Dr Gomes Dos Santos explained. “The principal objective is to support those who co-ordinate the multi-disciplinary teams, who meet weekly to discuss every single cancer patient while they’re on the path from being diagnosed, how the diagnosis is followed up, discussions with UK centres, as more than half of our patients have treatment there at some point, making sure it’s the best treatment option.
“The register makes sure that everything is tracked as it’s going along and that no patient gets lost within the system, because it keeps on giving you alerts. If a week has gone by and a patient hasn’t got an appointment for surgery or hasn’t got an appointment for a CT scan, it will be flagged, so it helps clinicians do their job even better.
“It gives that assurance to the patients that everything is on track, and also gives the specialist nurses time to interact more with the patients and give them a bit more information. If a patient calls them, they can open the register within a few minutes, instead of saying they’ll have to go and find out and possibly not be able to come back for several hours, or until the next day, which can cause a lot of anxiety.”
End-of-year audits can also be tackled in a far more efficient fashion, she said, as all the necessary information is already in the system and can be extrapolated at the click of a mouse, rather than requiring a laborious extraction process.
Dr Gomes Dos Santos said the data coming out of the audits was invaluable.
“We can now look at it in real time and then justify why we need another nurse, or why we need to have more mammograms, or why we need to see how we can impact a certain age group. We can then start looking at how it’s impacting the patients.”
Progress is monitored by a steering committee that includes significant patient representation.
More developments are anticipated during 2025, with the Hospital moving towards a fully electronic prescribing system, the use of AI tools in diagnosis and digitising nurses’ notes.
Dr Gomes Dos Santos said: “We are much closer to going completely digital within the next 12 to 18 months. That’s the dream and we are getting close to it now.”
