The Wifi is a fantastic opportunity for us to
explain our mission in education, research
and clinical care so all of our students and
researchers can use the AG roam
network, so we were able to put that up.
And then with the clinical care part of it, we've
obviously been able to deploy laptops on wheels
and mobile devices and medical equipment that’s
connected over the Wifi.
So all our clinical care is delivered on carts which
uses the Wifi technology and it's revolutionised
both clinical and patient experience.
Before we used to take blood pressure manually
which takes lots of time, so now we use the Wifi
because that makes everything easy for staff
to take blood pressure and also to record
all observations in order as quickly as possible,
so that's why it's very good.
We have been able to show that by using
bedside devices, we have been able to release
600 hours of nursing time from routine documentation.
That time can be used in direct patient care
that supports patient outcomes but actually
supports nurses' wellbeing as well.
So in the last 12 months, we've been able to roll
out clinical documentation and electronic prescribing
to enhance our patient record.
Through the use of Wifi enabled and remote access
into electronic patient records has revolutionised
my clinical care.
So on call, I’m on call not in the Trust.
I'm at home or mobile and I can now access into
the patient that I’m discussing with the relevant
doctor in the Trust directly.
The midwives would work out in the community.
They would fill everything in on paper.
They would then come back in.
They would then put it onto the system.
What it means for our staff is that they save
an hour per woman not having had to come back
in and do that double entry, so that has been
a huge thing for us antenatally.
Postnatally, with each woman having around
about four to five postnatal appointments,
we are now not having to do that on paper and
we are able to put that straight into the system
which when they then discharge from our care,
it then links back into their main medical record.
The great thing about Wifi being available free
in the hospital is that patients are able to still
live their lives while they are here, so they can
contact their family.
They can be in contact with work and they can
entertain themselves as well, so I think they
are able to continue with their life while they
are here on our site.
I came in just after Christmas.
My partner had been quite ill so we came in.
I spent five days here; no one chucked me out,
so he wasn't particularly responsive at the time
and I spent most of the time on the Wifi,
and I was very grateful for it.
It was really helpful for my partner as well,
once he got a bit better, he was able to use the
Wifi and I think he found that a big comfort
actually.
Now, as a paediatrician, I go out and about on
the bike and do a lot of work in different
community settings, so GP surgeries, might be
linked up to children's centres or other
community centres.
And so the difficulty there is a lot of those places
don't have Wifi; they don’t have access to
the internet, and that really gets in the way
of the stuff that we want to do.
So whether that’s about using Wifi around
information that’s on the internet or indeed,
linking up to patient care records and some of
the work that’s going on there.
So the next step for this project for me would be
to try and get Wifi out into GP surgeries,
into community centres and other places where
healthcare is delivered.
Putting in a Wifi service for patients was something
we absolutely wanted to do but we also knew
the constraints that we were up against,
which was there is absolutely no money available.
So was it possible?
And the consensus was no.
But we were determined to try it anyway.
We did manage to find a vendor that would give
us a free Wifi service and that's both free to
the Trust and to the patients and staff.
And it was Wifi Spark.
It had never been done before, so we're
very proud of what we managed to achieve and
it’s had a huge benefit to the Trust and our patients.