Challenge
North West London Cancer Network (NWLCN) hospitals treat thousands of patients each year, across a variety of cancer pathways – including head and neck, breast, urology and lung cancer. Throughout the 10 hospitals in the network, clinicians regularly gather in Multi-Disciplinary Team meetings (MDTs) to discuss their patients’ cases and to share expertise. Effective multi-disciplinary team working requires close collaboration, sophisticated medical image management and the ability to move seamlessly from one patient case to the next.
Ten years ago, clinicians from across NWLCN were required to attend MDT meetings in-person or to join from specially-equipped conference rooms, which presented significant logistical challenges. Clinicians were spending too much time traveling from meeting to meeting, data was too difficult to share and review, and poor attendance at specialist MDT meetings was a recurring problem.
NWLCN needed to find a technology solution that would enable time-constrained clinicians across a vast and geographically-dispersed cancer network to attend MDT meetings virtually, while still allowing them to collaborate freely and review relevant clinical data in full resolution.
Solution
NWLCN leveraged Visionable’s technology to design a new approach for cancer MDTs to allow any clinician to join from anywhere, while allowing participants to simultaneously transmit large amounts of clinical information, including PACS & Pathology, cancer information management data and any computer image (e.g. PowerPoint presentations) to all locations in the meeting. The system is also extremely scalable, which allows a large number of individuals to meet from various locations such as conference or meeting rooms, small offices, desktop and laptop connections. Clinicians can also join from home if the meeting is held out of hours.
Powered by Visionable’s technology, NWLCN successfully connected 10 hospitals and 15 MDT rooms, enabling 5-20 virtual MDTs a week across Northwest London, and linking rooms with as few as 2 participants or as many as 15. A typical meeting involves anywhere from 20 – 80 clinicians connecting from several locations. So clinicians from various hospitals can get invaluable peer input on their patients’ cases to decide the best diagnosis, prognosis and intended care and treatment.
“Visionable’s technology allowed multiple-site, multiple-image conferencing and has transformed the way clinical meetings are held.”
Fiona Bonas, Former Director North West London Cancer Network.
Impact
- Attendance at NWLCN specialist meetings nearly doubled from pre-implementation rates
- Improved patient care and better clinical decisions increased due to greater collaboration between teams
- Clinicians spent less time spent travelling, subsequently increasing front-line clinical time
- The NHS and NWLCN saved valuable travel time and improved cost efficiency
Visionable has been so effective in improving multi-disciplinary team working in NW London, it’s now being implemented across other pathways and in other locations. With the recent implementation of cloud technology, teams are no longer tied to hospital networks, so they have more freedom to connect from wherever, whenever. Other teams implementing Visionable now can link their teams together from any device at any location to improve efficiencies and clinical outcomes.
Case study accurate as of March 2020.
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