SW AHSN Holds Second Hackathon in Torbay, Aiming to Enhance Home to Health Patient Transport
On 24 November, 45 health and care stakeholders were brought together in Torquay by the South West Academic Health Science Network (SW AHSN) and Torbay & South Devon NHS Foundation Trust, to identify ideas to enhance the system for transporting eligible patients from their homes to a health and care setting (home to health transport).
Mairead McAlinden, CEO of Torbay & South Devon NHS Foundation Trust opened the day by describing some of the current problems from the hospital’s perspective and spelt out its commitment to helping to solve these. Stakeholders including voluntary sector providers, hospital patient transport representatives, local authorities, commissioners, drivers and patients then worked through a series of patient-centred stories to highlight the types of issue currently seen in the system as it stands. The afternoon sessions saw the identification and refinement of several ideas to enhance the current system.
Phil Heywood, Head of Planning and Partnerships for Torbay & South Devon NHS Foundation Trust said: Delivering effective transport support for people accessing health and care services is a long-standing issue and one we know is of concern to local people and partners in voluntary and community groups. So we were really excited when the SW AHSN agreed to support the Trust in engaging with stakeholders from voluntary and community groups to identify solutions to this complex problem. The SW AHSN team really helped us to understand the problems in the current system and the Hackathon approach was a very powerful in bringing people, with diverse views and experiences, together in a productive way which generated, and prioritised, some great ideas on the day. We look forward to working up and delivering the ideas generated, in partnership with the different stakeholders.
The ideas that came out of the hackathon will be developed through project-based partnerships between the SW AHSN, Torbay & South Devon NHS Foundation Trust, the voluntary sector transport service providers and other stakeholders from local authority and commissioning level.
Over the next year, the SW AHSN will be running more NHS-led hackathons to identify potential solutions to some of the big issues affecting the South West health and care system.
For more information on the MSK hackathon or future SW AHSN hackathons contact: info@swahsn.com
