CW Innovation: Rapid advancement in remote care in response to COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic created an urgent need for innovation, prompting us to rapidly introduce a range of digital systems and platforms into our daily operations. These advancements help us deliver safe, consistent, and high-quality clinical care while making things easier for our patients.

Through the CW Innovation programme, led jointly by the Trust and CW+, our charity, we have accelerated the rollout of new digital systems to meet the diverse needs of our patients and minimise their need to come into our hospitals.

Our efforts have focused on two main areas: improving how we connect with and communicate with patients, and ensuring that we maintain excellent care even when in-person visits are limited.

We have introduced new technologies to:

• Enable patients to monitor and report symptoms from home, access health records, and book appointments online
• Extend care beyond the hospital with virtual consultations, digital care plan apps, and sensor technologies to monitor patients remotely

The rapid and transformative progress achieved through CW Innovation has positioned the Trust as a national leader in adopting next-generation services and care tools, supporting our patients and staff as needs evolve amid the challenges of COVID-19.

Among the digital solutions launched are Klick, DBm-Health, and enhanced tools from Lumeon—all in response to the pandemic, ensuring high-quality remote care for patients at home.

Klick, developed with ViiV Healthcare, enhances care for people with HIV by allowing patients to manage appointments, complete health assessments, review results, and communicate with their healthcare team from home, while clinicians can swiftly assess needs to provide timely care.

DBm-Health, cocreated by Trust diabetes clinicians and Sensyne Health, supports diabetes patients by enabling remote blood glucose monitoring and clinician oversight, reducing the need for hospital visits.

In collaboration with Lumeon, our postnatal team has also enhanced our award-winning digital discharge solution to provide new mothers with a postnatal discharge report, ensuring continuity of care as mothers and babies leave the hospital more quickly and have limited face-to-face contact with community midwives or health visitors. This new technology ensures that all carers have the necessary information to support ongoing postnatal care.