BigHand Vital to Hospital Turnaround

BigHand recently completed a digital dictation workflow project with the Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust in London, leading to efficiencies and reduced costs critical to a $25.8 million turnaround strategy.

The implementation has enabled consultants at the trust to record essential notes digitally for quick and easy transcription and to share work between 700 users across four sites that serve a combined local population of 500,000. The solution from BigHand has eliminated the need for traditional analogue tapes that can be easily lost or damaged and need to be physically sent between sites—a time-consuming, unsecure, and expensive process.

The workflow system gives secretarial staff visibility into which dictations need to be handled first, the owner of the dictation, and length of the recording, enabling them to better manage their workflow and transcribe more productively compared with a traditional tape system. The implementation is part of a wider IT initiative to drive productivity following the merger of three hospitals and in preparation for a new development which is opening in 2010.

"The trust produces highly confidential and deadline-critical dictation on a day-to-day basis, so a secure, stable dictation system with the ability to prioritize is essential," Paul Curley, consultant surgeon and clinical director of surgical services at Mid-Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust, said in a statement. "We selected BigHand over other vendors for its ease-of-use, alignment with Microsoft technologies, and enhanced functionality such as reporting and monitoring."