February 2023

Women in Wales to benefit from new digital maternity system

Digital Maternity Cymru is pleased to announce Ministerial approval and £7m of funding for a five-year work programme that will digitally transform maternity services for women and clinicians in Wales.

Health boards currently use a combination of different digital and paper systems. Health Minister, Eluned Morgan said, “Several recent reviews of maternity services in Wales and the UK have called for the creation of a unified digital system”.

Digital Health and Care Wales (DHCW) will procure and implement this new maternity system. It will allow healthcare professionals across every health board in Wales to share vital information more quickly, supporting safe, effective and consistent maternity services wherever women choose to access care.

Read more on our DHCW News site.

New digital dashboard improves view of kidney transplant waitlist and speeds up donor compatibility checks

A new dashboard developed by a collaborative of NHS Wales teams is making it quicker and easier for clinicians and laboratory staff to view information about patients in south, west and mid Wales who are waiting for a kidney transplant.

Developed to improve the speed and accuracy of information sharing between health boards, the dashboard gives the Welsh Transplantation and Immunogenetics Laboratory (WTAIL) and other authorised NHS Wales users a regularly updated view of approximately 250 patients on the kidney and pancreas transplant waiting list.

BMJ Best Practice Comorbidities Manager now available across NHS Wales

NHS Wales e-Library has extended their national subscription to BMJ Best Practice to include the Comorbidities Manager for all NHS Wales health and care professionals.

In the UK alone, one in three patients admitted to hospital as an emergency have five or more conditions. This poses a significant challenge for healthcare professionals. Clinical guidelines often focus on single conditions, but failure to treat the whole patient can lead to worse clinical outcomes, and longer lengths of stay. The global COVID-19 pandemic further highlighted the problem with over 60% of patients admitted to intensive care units having comorbidities.

The Comorbidities Manager with BMJ Best Practice supports the management of the whole patient by including guidance on the treatment of a patient’s acute condition alongside their pre-existing comorbidities.