Video: Alder Hey launches children’s “hospital of the future” with hybrid digital health platform
Creating a “hospital without walls”, Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust has launched a ground-breaking digital platform that aims to revolutionise the way in which patient care is delivered to children and young people.
The hybrid health platform, AlderHey@nywhere, is being championed as a “hospital of the future”, where patient and clinical care is delivered in a hybrid world, both physical and virtual.
The interactive and immersive digital platform provides a hybrid point of access and patient care for families, children, young people and clinicians to manage, treat, educate and coordinate delivery of their healthcare. Most importantly, it will focus on preventative healthcare and will make patient care more accessible and personalised.
The technology was developed by Alder Hey Innovation in collaboration with Microsoft and Mindwave, which develops digital health solutions, as a solution to addressing the finite capacity of hospital and community resources, including both physical space and workforce. This was also paired with an increased demand of accident and emergency admissions, long waiting times for outpatient appointments, and increasing lengths of stay.
Commenting on the launch of the new digital health platform, Managing Director of Alder Hey Innovation, Claire Liddy, said: “At the moment, healthcare is most often about treating people that are ill. What we want to do is to shift to a more preventative model of care that is individualised and tailored and that empowers children and young people to take ownership of their healthcare and treatment.
“There are so many different technologies out there now, including wearable technology and devices such as smartwatches that enable you to monitor your health at home. What we needed was a hybrid platform to bring it all together into one place so that families, children and young people could access it, alongside their clinicians at the hospital.
“We think the AlderHey@nywhere platform will allow us to elevate the level and access to care for children and young people who tell us that they want to be empowered to understand and manage their own healthcare and treatment. It also allows us to move to a more preventative healthcare modelling, making healthcare more individual and personalised.”
Alder Hey has a dedicated innovation centre within the hospital and campus, focused on using cutting-edge technologies and innovations to solve the real-world, everyday problems faced by children and young people.
Alder Hey Innovation believes that by leveraging innovative health technology, digital platforms, data and AI, it can revolutionise the way healthcare is delivered to children and young people. It seeks to break down the traditional barriers for patients when accessing care and personal health information, as well as when receiving therapies and seeking education with the hybrid hospital approach.
Claire added: “The Innovation Centre at Alder Hey Children’s hospital is a really special and unique place. It’s a dedicated team, all focussed on bringing new technology into healthcare for the benefit of children and young people.
“We work with a wide range of private sector partners, including tech giants, SMEs, entrepreneurs and universities, to co-invent new technologies and innovations. We have a different mindset and culture of innovation; we are able to move fast and think big, which allows our innovation path to accelerate much faster than the traditional pathways.
“We are able to fuse healthcare and tech innovation with industry. This fusion brings something special and unique, creating faster-paced technologies.”
Watch the video below to find out more about the innovative hybrid paediatric hospital:
Mindwave Founder and CEO, Kumar Jacob, commented: “Our role has been to ensure that the portal is visually appealing and immersive, making sure the experience that young people, children and their families have is engaging, enjoyable, simple-to-use and easy-to-understand.
“At the same time, we want the complicated data and AI to flow seamlessly to ensure that the data flow of information is interoperable and sent across multiple devices, making the experience seamless, functional and easy for clinicians to use.”
AlderHey@nywhere enables the interoperability of multiple systems using FHIR, remote devices and resources for management of acute and chronic conditions. Furthermore, it collates a new unique data set for longer-term, AI-augmented decision making for preventative intervention, personalised care and long-term disease prevention.
Alder Hey Innovation is the largest, dedicated, purpose-built, hospital-led innovation centre in the UK. Alder Hey Children’s NHS Trust has a history of innovation spanning over 100 years and provides care for over 330,000 children and young people every year.