DigiPAS

Project: DigiPAS - Digital whiteboard solutions for the municipal health service.
Digital collaboration solutions provide increased quality, better patient safety and efficient use of resources in the municipal health service.

The DigiPAS project (2018-2020) has gathered experience from five Norwegian municipalities related to the use of digital whiteboard solutions with the aim of increasing quality and patient safety and at the same time making better use of resources. The municipalities have had the record system as their most important tool.

However, the medical record systems are ducumentation systems that has little support for work processes and collaboration. Healthcare workers often spend a lot of time interacting about patients and tasks. A digital collaboration solution has given employees an overview of priority tasks and patients, which has been a support in following up users. It has helped to improve the quality of patient safety work, and has also improved the transition to and from the specialist health service.

DNV Imatis’ collaboration solution has contributed to better follow-up of users in the home care service by clarifying surveys and checklists. It has also made collaboration around users easier. The DigiPAS project has shown that digital whiteboards that structure tasks are a very useful tool for employees that also simplifies patient safety work. A good interaction between digital whiteboards and work practice has been important for the success with improvements.

DigiPAS was a research and innovation project led by SINTEF, where DNV Imatis worked closely with three municipalities in Norway on the development and testing of digital collaboration boards for various units in the municipal health service.

Benefits from a management perspective

DigiPAS has shown that managers experience good benefit from both the patient safety and interaction boards for making decisions. In the home care service, the heads of departments have been given an overall overview of patients and tasks. Information has been registered in the digital whiteboard instead of on yellow notes, and has given the leaders an experience of control through a better overview of the whole. A leader has put it this way “we can invest resources earlier and be more prepared”.

Digital boards have contributed to a 53.9% reduction in overstay days. Daily price for overstay days is approx. 5,000 NOK. This has represented an avoided cost of approx. 2.6 MNOK for one of the municipalities in question.

With the digital collaboration whiteboards, the service office with the same number of employees has handled a larger number of users and cases. The digital whiteboards have been important in increased capacity of approximately 30% in the service office. More targeted sharing of sensitive personal information has led to better privacy.