NHS Scotland assets and facilities 2017: annual report

Annex D

Shared Services: Clinical Engineering Programme

Clinical Engineering is a component part of Medical Physics and has wide-reaching responsibilities including the management of over 100,000 devices. It has the largest, broadest and deepest reach into clinical services under one national structure.

Sitting under the NHS Scotland Shared Services Health Portfolio, the Clinical Engineering Programme was launched in December 2016 to consider innovative approaches to healthcare across primary, secondary and community locations and facilitate a framework development for safe, effective implementation of new healthcare technology across Scotland.

The Programme has been developing quickly with three projects well underway. The Programme Team has been engaged in planning activity with key stakeholders for the three workstreams including the development of project plans, initial data gathering activity and the establishment of Advisory Groups.

The Programme formally launched in April 2017 with the following three Projects:

National Medical Equipment

The National Medical Equipment workstream aims to deliver a Once for Scotland approach to the management of medical equipment.

A National Medical Equipment Framework project will initially focus on a specific subset of medical equipment, analysing the pathway through the equipment lifecycle to identify areas for best practice, harmonisation, cross boundary collaboration and the benefits of standardisation. The project will ensure a safe and cost effective harmonised approach to Medical Equipment Management for Scotland.

It is anticipated that the benefits of such an approach will result in a more cohesive, cross Health Board approach, the introduction of standard nomenclature and tagging conventions, consistency in the approach to maintenance and calibration, and the opportunity to realise efficiency gains.

Managed Introduction of New Technologies

The Managed Introduction of New Technologies workstream will provide a robust process for the safe and effective introduction of new technologies into patient care.

The first project is ‘The National 3D Printing Framework Project’ aiming to deliver an exemplar that enables a Scotland wide, integrated approach to the use of 3D printing. The project will focus on exploring the uses of 3D printing, consider funding and the pool of printers within the service, the benefits of economies of scale, a single Quality Management System and co-ordinated research collaborations.

Health Technology Informatics

The Health Technology Informatics workstream aims to enable data from patient home monitoring devices to be effectively captured and analysed to support clinical decision making across a range of specialties.

The National Translational Technology Informatics Project will specifically focus on type 1 diabetes patients aged 13-25. The project aims to deliver an exemplar whereby diabetes patient’s home managed data is transferred instantly from device to a cloud environment. This data is analysed and subsequently fed to the clinician in the form of a dashboard, which will provide notifications and key data to enable informed decision making on prioritisation of patients.

This personalised approach to care will ensure that the right patients are seen at the right time and efficiencies are improved. This will result in better outcomes for patients.

In addition, benefits such as real time data, clinical alerts, bed and cost savings will be realised while contributing to a safer patient environment, improved self management and havening a more anticipatory approach to this condition.