What’s it all about? Part 2
Why should NHS Trusts team up with Drugs Audit?
Despite being a new platform, Drugs Audit has existed in prototype form for a number of years. As we touched on in our previous blog, this is the result of a collaboration between Sunil Dabasia and We Love Surveys to find solutions to pharmacy challenges. The result is a product with significant research and professional input behind it.
Drugs Audit was designed to simplify the entire process of completing medication audits for hospital pharmacy teams. The web-based platform instantly reduces the amount of manual administration time required and improves compliance, whilst also contributing to the NHS paperless goal. And this is just the start!
Over the past 12 months we’ve seen a digital revolution taking place within the NHS. We’ve witnessed the release of the NHS app, an increase in electronically prescribed prescriptions and the distribution of thousands of iPads in a move towards a digitised future within the NHS.
“It's not about any one technology, but the convergence of all different types of technology […] coming together to enable us to do things in smarter, better ways” (1)
Daniel Kraft founder and chair of Exponential Medicine and founder of Digital.Health.
It’s not just Controlled Drugs Audits either; CD was just the beginning. From digitising one audit we opened the door to a huge amount of audits that are vital but go unnoticed; everything from Medication Safety and FP10 to Fridge and Oxygen audits. Collaborations with our partners in the NHS have been vital to the development of the platform and raised awareness of the pain points they encounter on a day to day basis.
Our primary goal was to make the solution simple to use. We didn’t want to create work or add effort for pharmacy teams, we wanted to remove these from the audit process. The obvious benefits are seen in the time taken to carry out an audit, the prompts to ensure the audit is right first time and the automation of reports. No more manual inputting of data and analysing it in Excel! But a wider benefit, yet to be realised, is the power of this data when reviewed in a wider context. Are there learnings nationally from having an automated medication audit analytics platform? Time will tell, but we certainly think so.
Our secondary goal was, and still is, to be the best partner we can be to our trust colleagues. We strive to be different to other software companies. We seek to understand challenges and are passionate about being a partner, not just a supplier. We are proud that our current partner trusts feel that we are achieving this:
“For us, working with Drugs Audit is so refreshing. The platform is perfect for our needs and it does exactly what you promised. More importantly, you are nothing like other software providers, you are always there for us, responsive to our needs and you really do care, this makes all the difference for us”
- Poureya Aghakhani, Chief Pharmacist, London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust
There is no denying the growing influence and rapid development of technology in clinical pharmacy. As a result, it’s no surprise that NHS Trusts are looking to get ahead of the curve and take their audits digital too.
What’s next for Drugs Audit?
Drugs Audit is now live, and we are actively looking for trusts to try out the platform and provide feedback for future developments. With this feedback we can continue to make your auditing process as pain free as possible!
Those trusts that come forward will enjoy early access to all features and an improved audit process within weeks. Most importantly, this frees up their clinical time to focus on the most important work - patient care.
You can sign up to hear the latest from Drugs Audit, or register for a demo of the platform for yourself at www.drugsaudit.com
References
https://www.pharmacytoday.org/article/S1042-0991(21)00300-5/fulltext