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SymlConnect: Digital remote patient monitoring during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond
Healthcare organisations are facing increasing challenges with their already outstretched resources and budgets, such as higher rates of comorbidity, elderly care and mental health issues.
Regular monitoring of all patients is mandatory for preventative actions and maintaining patients’ wellbeing. There are national concerns around unmanageable patient-facing appointment needs and lack of monitoring consistency. Monitoring is essential for the patients as well as the practices to achieve their target outcomes and aims. The situation is further impacted with the social distancing in place due to the COVID-19 pandemic resulting in severe backlogs.
It is widely acknowledged that ‘Digital Transformation’ is the solution. However, initiating this journey for ‘change’ simultaneously with day to day responsibilities is challenging. SymlConnect has been working with specialists and patients to ascertain ways of minimising the efforts of implementing digital change, operationally. Data capture is an integral part of patient care to support long-term conditions for prudent outcomes, including at-risk
screenings, smoking status, clinical history, medication review, postoperative monitoring and patient feedback. Patients still provide information on paper, while much of the clinical data capture is done by the
clinicians during their consultations.
An exclusive, interactive, intelligent analytics tool offers instantaneous graphical accounts, supporting speedy identification of clinical needs to initiate prompt actions according to priority. Relevant timely interventions consequently deliver better time management, preventative actions and valueadded outcomes all round.
www.symlconnect.com
The Mullany Fund: giving young people the support they need to pursue life sciences
Our mission at The Mullany Fund is to ensure that young people – regardless of their socioeconomic position – should have the tools, the confidence and the opportunity to pursue a career in the life and health sciences. We work with some of the most disadvantaged young people and communities within South Wales, matching those aged 14-19 with an online mentor and providing them with 8-10 weeks of structured and tailored advice, guidance and resources to support them through key transition points in their educational progress.
The impact of COVID-19 is widespread, and students are facing a worrying level of uncertainty, causing significant anxiety for many of them.
Staff at The Mullany Fund – working remotely, and in partnership with our fantastic teachers – have been determined that our support should continue. It is clear that providing consistent and reliable services is vital to ensure that these young people remain focused on their goals and reassured that despite the current challenges, they have much to achieve and opportunities to look forward to.
A recent report from the Sutton Trust found that only 30 per cent of A-Level students at state schools were regularly receiving work and feedback on their studies at home, compared with 57 per cent of students at private schools. Similarly, the report found that working class UCAS applicants were twice as likely as their middle class peers to experience difficulty in finding a suitable place to study at home.
The majority of our support – in the form of the Mullany e-Mentoring project – is entirely digital in nature. Thus, we are fortunate to be able to rely on our pre-existing, robust digital infrastructure and our staff are well versed in remote engagement. This allows us to be able to provide a consistent and recognisable body of support to our students, with additions to ensure content reflects our students’ needs in the current restrictions. Some of our mentors are frontline NHS workers, and so we have been prepared to adapt in the case of a sudden shortage of mentors. Thankfully, this does not seem to have been the case. Indeed, we have found that many of our mentors are even more enthusiastic than usual, eager to make a difference, however small, in our current trying times. It is encouraging that many of our mentors share our belief that now, more than ever, it is paramount that we support our most disadvantaged young people to plan for their futures and to consider the many opportunities open to them within the NHS and other life science sectors. The NHS and other healthcare and life science professions have arguably never seemed more important to us all. By continuing to offer tailored and consistent mentoring and support, we will help to inspire many of our hardest-to-reach students into life science and NHS careers, thus strengthening the future life science workforce of Wales. For more information about how you could help support us, contact us at office@themullanyfund.org
