Innovation

Here at The Mid Yorkshire Teaching NHS Trust, we want to look after our patients and staff. Innovation can help with this, because it allows for new ideas to be developed to solve problems.

Innovation can be a better process or a new piece of equipment that contributes to patient experience and care. It could also be something to help with wellbeing of our staff.

The Trust has invested in Innovation by appointing Stuart Bond as Director of Innovation. Mid Yorkshire is a member of Medipex which is a healthcare innovation hub. Medipex helps to connect health care organisations with commercial partners to develop new ideas. We also work closely with Health Innovation Yorkshire and Humber to bring good ideas to the Trust.

Innovation is closely linked to the Research team and to the Mid Yorkshire Quality Improvement System, to make sure we build an innovation-friendly culture.

Innovation stories

Innovation has delivered workforce developments, technological achievements and pioneering techniques, as well as exciting opportunities to advance patient care. The Covid-19 pandemic also saw rapid, innovative advancements.

As we look to the future and how we can achieve excellent patient experience each and every time at Mid Yorkshire, we are committed to focusing on technology and innovation to help us realise our vision.

Read our stories

Take a look at some of our recent examples of innovation that we would like to share with you below.

Asthma care initiative

Following a successful bid for a £150,000 research grant from the NHS Accelerated Access Collaborative’s ‘Pathway Transformation Fund’, Respiratory Consultant Dr Llinos Jones was pivotal in creating a suite of multilingual resources.

This was aimed at tackling language, literacy and cultural barriers for patients with asthma whose first language isn’t English, in a bid to break down health inequalities across the region.

You can also view the suite of multilingual videos produced.

Robotic process automation

As part of our ongoing digital transformation at Mid Yorkshire, four successful and live robotic process automation (RPA) projects were implemented – all within the first 12 months of beginning our RPA journey, alongside partner NDL Software.

RPA is used to automate repetitive, manual and time-consuming rule-based tasks, or to establish a fully automated end-to-end process, with the aid of a software robot – often referred to as a ‘bot’.

Utilising NDL’s RPA platform, the Trust has revolutionised key processes for an impressive catalogue of ‘quick-wins’. These processes were identified as experimental starting points, allowing the effectiveness of RPA to be guaged within the Trust and its contribution to digital transformation.

We also scooped a bronze award honour at the Public Sector Transformation Awards in 2022 for the delivery of our robotic process automation project.

You can also view a video produced by our supplier NDL about robotic process automation at Mid Yorkshire.

Patients Know Best

Patients Know Best (PKB) is our secure online patient portal and was launched in January 2021. PKB provides our patients with online access to their personal health information relating to the care we provide, such as hospital appointment information, appointment letters and test results.

Users can simply log in using any internet-enabled device, such as a smartphone, tablet or desktop computer. Once signed up to the system, patients will begin to receive some of their future correspondence this way, helping to keep personal information securely in one place. It is also possible to provide access to personal information on PKB to a patient’s family, carers and health professionals.

In October 2021, we announced the launch of a new all-in-one online service which integrated the NHS App and Patients Know Best. This allows registered PKB users in the Mid Yorkshire region to easily access their personal health record for free from the NHS App and view their information, no matter where they are, with a single sign-on.

Since launch, there are currently 128,000 Mid Yorkshire patients registered with Patients Know Best. Plans are underway for the next phase of development, making more information available via the platform.

Talking Pineapple Power at PAPSCon

In February, specialists from the Regional Burns Unit at Pinderfields Hospital were invited to speak at PAPSCon 2023, the Pakistan Association of Plastic Surgery annual conference in Bahawalpur, Pakistan to talk about the Trust's expertise and experience in enzymatic debridement.

Enzymatic debridement is a technique for treating a burn wound. The treatment involves using an enzyme paste made from a pineapple plant to remove damaged tissue. Typically, the paste is combined with a dressing that is changed regularly. The paste softens the tissue and allows for the damaged tissue to be removed when the dressing is removed with minimal damage to viable tissue.

Mr Umair Anwar and Dr Brendan Sloan were invited speakers providing education and advice on enzymatic burn debridement, something Mid Yorkshire Hospitals has a great deal of experience with.