Over 3000 GP surgeries and nine Urgent & Emergency Care centres will see a “range of kiosk solutions” to help streamline digital triage and check-in – thus easing pressures around the UK.
A digital company has developed a range of kiosk solutions to help eConsult provide a ‘digital front door to healthcare’ in 3200 GP surgeries and 9 Urgent & Emergency Care (UEC) centres across the country.
UK and American based imageHOLDERS has worked with eConsult to create a tailored product catalogue. It’s intended to meet the individual specifications and requirements of different healthcare settings.
Each self-service interactive kiosk with eConsult‘s digital triage software is highly secure. It’s also user-friendly, accessible and health-conscious to reduce cross-infection.
Founded by GPs wanting to modernise healthcare methods, eConsult aims to digitally connect patients to healthcare to improve accessibility.
It’s also to improve efficiency, and patient care. This ethos was the driving force to implement self-service kiosk solutions in healthcare environments.
Must “radically improve” emergency departments
With the recent staffing crisis, huge waiting lists and even the recent cyber attacks on the NHS, efficient and effective urgent care in hospitals has arguably never been more important. eConsult has claimed to “radically improve emergency departments” by deploying digital triage kiosks at the front door.
This intelligent software helps to identify a patient’s priority level and, consequently, personalise their care. The systems aim to reduce waiting times, save essential resources, and improve patient experience and care.
The Urgent and Emergency Care platform is a self-service patient check-in software system that uses a comprehensive and itemised algorithm to predict patient outcomes based on their symptoms and/or the level of injury.
This accelerates the initial personal assessment process.
Using the healthcare kiosk
Patients can use an imageHOLDERS healthcare kiosk that hosts eConsult’s software to check in on arrival, inputting general personal details and then answering questions that they would be asked by a nurse or clinician.
This reduces the time patients spend queueing at reception, helps the nurses and clinicians to understand more quickly which patients are the sickest and need to be seen sooner.
It also avoids patients needing to repeat their reasons for attending with every interaction they have in the department.
eConsult had completed extensive work with their clinical users and patients to best understand what features would be useful to assist usability for all.
The final kiosk solution offers UX/UI of the electronic platform, alongside clear and easy-to-understand signage to help users navigate the customer journey. The final signage and kiosk options can be tailored to the requirements for each site whilst retaining the need for a consistent approach to aesthetics and branding
More about the project
The final kiosk outcome is clinical, and therefore governance and security are paramount. Consequently, the kiosk solution needed to securely house an iPad and the enclosure had to be strong and robust to withstand heavy footfall in the hospital setting.
Accessibility was crucial, as the interactive kiosk needed to be able to service as many users as possible. Therefore, secure fixtures were needed to support the variety of user options, including floor-standing and wall-mounted solutions.
Nicola Ryall, secondary care implementation lead at eConsult said: “My role means I must be able to advise customers about the best products and approaches to optimise the use of our products to improve patient care.
“Working with imageHOLDERS has meant I am able to be confident that I am offering them the best advice, quality products, a quality installation and a quality service supported by a supplier who really understands our and the customer’s needs.”
Jon Ellis, ImageHOLDERS senior account manager, who worked with eConsult, added: “Working with eConsult is a real pleasure, their clinical background means they not only care about the patient experience but know how to make it flow efficiently.
“They have helped shape our hardware offering using knowledge that can only be gained by having been on the frontline of healthcare provision.”
“Given our reliance on the healthcare services in the UK, over the last few years in particular, it feels great to be part of creating a solution that will genuinely help both staff and patients. I look forward to getting more hospitals using the solution.”
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