A group of teams within NHS Wales has developed a digital dashboard providing information about patients awaiting kidney transplants in the south, west and middle of the country.
Digital Health and Care Wales said it was launched two months ago, and is being used by the Welsh Transplantation and Immunogenetics Laboratory (WTAIL) and other authorised users in the health service to obtain a regularly updated view of approximately 250 patients on the kidney and pancreas waiting list.
It said the data is updated twice per day compared with the production of a monthly report under the previous process.
The dashboard also calculates the amount of time since the previous blood sample was taken for routine patient monitoring. It then colour codes and filters patient information to let users know whether the next sample is due.
In the two months since the dashboard was deployed, the team has seen a 65% reduction in the number of overdue samples, ensuring that more patients have up-to-date laboratory results. This improves the speed and efficiency of the process of checking compatibility when a donor offer is received.
Built on Microsoft
The solution was created using Microsoft 365 products including Power BI and is the result of a collaboration between the specialists at WTAIL, the Welsh Blood Service’s digital team, and the NHS Wales Microsoft 365 Centre of Excellence hosted by Digital Health and Care Wales.
Felicity May, clinical specialist histocompatibility and immunogenetics digital lead at WTAIL said: “The Kidney Transplant Dashboard has been a game changer for us – not only for improving the way we manage our potential transplant recipients, but also highlighting the potential for digital solutions to improve our services and patient care.”
