Phew awarded Innovation Funding to develop app to help hospitals discharge patients more effectively

Date: Wednesday, 04th Nov 2020 | Category: Apps, Phew news

We are excited to announce that this month Phew has been awarded a significant grant from the Sustainable Innovation Fund to support the development of our discharge management app, allowing a more effective discharge of hospital patients.

Innovate UK LogoWith the medical state of patients in hospitals constantly changing, it is difficult to provide accurate, real-time information about patients. This funding from Innovate UK will mean we can make exciting changes to our current Hospital Discharge Application to provide healthcare professionals with the most up-to-the-minute information about a patient’s discharge status.

This, in turn, increases bed flow, reduce patient length of stay, and will free up hospital beds quicker. Patients who stay in hospital care for extended periods have a higher chance of becoming ill again. Therefore, timely discharge is extremely beneficial, as is bed space within a hospital.

The project will also see the integration of the discharge app – which was created by Phew in 2018 to initially meet the urgent discharge needs of Luton and Dunstable NHS Trust – with the current hospital patient administration system. This means patient details can be automatically be passed to the app when patients are admitted, saving busy staff valuable time.

It will also improve the reporting capability of the app, which is a vital part of the discharge process and allows public bodies outside of the hospital the ability to securely see bed statuses within their area, while also protecting patient data.

Matthew Burgess, Managing Director of Phew, explained: “Given the growing bed pressures on hospitals with winter challenges and COVID-19, this funding to improve our Hospital Discharge App couldn’t have come at a better time.

“This investment will allow us to continue to reduce the length of time patients stay in hospital, creates a wider and simpler health system collaboration and an overall better experience for patients.

“The Discharge Management Applications has already allowed one of our existing clients to admit an extra 14,000 patients per year, saving £2 million. And this will only improve with the new developments.”

The funding also means we can continue to develop our team here at Phew, support our local economy and build the client-focused solutions that we value.