Specialist provider of mental health and social care, 2gether, selects BigHand as their technology partner to support a 5 year Strategic Development and Transformation Programme to fundamentally change the way care is delivered.

The programme focuses on home and mobile working and maximising the use of digital technology to reduce the time spent on administration, including delivering, typing and approving documents. The trust currently has 2,300 employees who serve a population of 761,000 people across Gloucestershire and Herefordshire.

Currently, most of the Trust’s clinicians dictate into analogue audio tapes that are passed on to medical secretaries for typing or have to directly input information via keyboard into the Trust’s Electronic Patient Record. The quality of analogue tapes is insufficient and continued use is not feasible due to the increasing cost of tapes and recording devices. Additional shortcomings arise due to clinical staff having to spend a significant proportion of their time on non-clinical data recording tasks.

"The aim of the project is to make sure that our administrative and clinical processes allow us to maximise the time and energy focused on patients," says Ryan Lewis, IT Director at 2gether. "With BigHand’s technology, we will be able to streamline our administrative and recording processes and automate many transcription and document production tasks, which will free up support resource. We will be able to use the additional time to enhance our patient service."

Following a three-year research programme and competitive market tender, 2gether piloted three solutions from three separate providers, including BigHand. On the back of a successful trial period and recommendations within the marketplace, the trust confirmed the procurement of over 2500 BigHand technology licenses.

With BigHand’s software, clinicians will be able to submit digital dictations from their desktop, mobile or tablet applications as well as having dictations automatically transcribed by the speech recognition platform. Additionally, BigHand’s integration with patient administration system, RiO, will allow for the fully automated production of patient progress notes, requiring little to no manual intervention.

"The trust view this project as part of a fundamental change to our overall working practice," says Lewis. "This is a long-term strategic direction for us as opposed to a quick software implementation. We ran an extensive selection process to ensure our chosen provider had not just the technology required, but the competence and partnership approach to deliver tangible benefits throughout the duration of the contract.

We are confident that BigHand is the right technology partner for us now and into the future. We were looking for a scalable and future proof solution that would support our flexible working agenda and also off efficiency and cost savings. BigHand has provided us with a solution that ticks all the boxes and we are excited to realise our goals.”