Welsh Ambulance Services NHS Trust (WAST) is committed to improving patient care and employee experiences enabled through the potential of digital transformation. At the forefront of innovation in unplanned clinical care, the Trust operates across 111 services, Emergency Medical Services, 999 services, NHS Direct in Wales and Non-Emergency Patient Transport Services.
The challenge
WAST embarked on a transformation journey that includes an ambitious digital services strategy, which will support the delivery of patient care and improve staff experience. They identified technology as the key enabler of digital transformation of healthcare, supported by effective people and processes.
The trust wanted a partner who could support them to review their operating model and could:
• outline the functions required of directorate, now and in the future.
• support WAST to build an optimal structure of the ICT directorate.
• integrate their separate ICT and Health Informatics functions which were, in the main, operating independently from one another.
Ultimately, WAST required support to develop a robust digital operating model with clear methodology and delivery approach.
The solution
WAST selected Channel 3 to guide and support them in designing their future operating model for the digital directorate.
We did this by working across the Trust at executive and senior management level to understand and define the ambitions of the organisation from the perspective of digital health, shaping the future state that the digital directorate needed to support.
Through this lens of understanding, we assessed the Trust against our digital operating model framework to provide clarity on where the pressure points were in their current operating model and, just as importantly, how these pressures would affect their ability to deliver their strategy.
Finally, we shaped recommendations for a future state that supported ongoing alignment of digital services with key operational and clinical functions, enabled clear prioritisation of activity based on business value, with flexibility to respond to changing priorities.
ICT and Health Informatics siloes were removed, moving to the establishment of self-sufficient delivery teams for digital services, underpinned by a robust suite of foundational capabilities.
The results
Channel 3 consultants worked with WAST to provide a clear path to re-structuring and re-designing their operating model to bring the directorate together.
This was achieved through collaborative working to design a new approach for digital delivery that focussed on:
Shaping, agreeing and prioritising need with wider business stakeholders.
Empowering agile delivery teams to implement change at pace.
Providing robust, responsive and scalable foundational ICT capabilities.
This meant that WAST had found a strategic partner in Channel 3 that could support them with their digital transformation challenges – both now and for the future.
Andy Haywood, Director of Digital Services – Welsh Ambulance Services NHS TrustWe knew that our digital strategy was ambitious, and we needed a knowledgeable and trustworthy partner that could support us in realising our aspirations. The pragmatic approach that Channel 3 applied throughout the project, and their ability to actively engage the broad variety of stakeholders involved in our digital transformation project from across the organisation, really helped our strategy to take shape and make progress.
Channel 3 is a diverse group of knowledgeable people that have one thing in common – a passion for using technology to improve people’s lives. Health and care is going through a fundamental shift towards using integrated services to deliver the best possible care when people need help. We feel that this shift should be led by insight into the needs of the populations we serve, delivered using the best technology to enable staff to operate at the top of their license and deliver the best experience for people using services. Contact us using our online form below or on LinkedIn.
