NHS Cheshire and Merseyside acute heart failure virtual ward wins ‘Safety Improvement through Technology’ category in HSJ Patient Safety Awards

NHS Cheshire & Merseyside have won the ‘Safety Improvement through Technology’ category at the 2023 HSJ Patient Safety Awards for their remote monitoring-enabled heart failure virtual ward. The North West’s first heart failure virtual ward was launched in May 2022, following a successful joint bid from Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust (MCFT) and Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (LUHFT) to secure funding from the NHS Digital Health Partnership Award.

The virtual ward is part of Mersey Care’s Telehealth Service. It uses Docobo technology, which is the remote monitoring functionality of Graphnet Health’s CareCentric population health solution.

The virtual ward ensures heart failure patients can receive the same care by remaining at home as they would expect from a hospital and helps with the early identification of any deterioration of symptoms and complications via data readings that are received by a clinical hub.

Patients accepted onto the service have a daily review in the virtual ward round by a consultant and are monitored for 14 days by Telehealth clinicians. The daily observations include temperate checks, blood pressure, oxygen levels, step count, ECG taken at home, three times a day and daily symptoms questionnaire for clinical assessment and acute virtual ward monitoring.

Dr Rajiv Sankaranarayanan, Consultant Cardiologist and Heart Failure Lead at LUHFT accepted the award with the team at the HSJ event on 18^th September.

Adrian Flowerday, Managing Director of Docobo says: ‘Huge congratulations to the team – it’s wonderful to be part of this virtual ward programme and to see the benefit it brings to patients.’