Transforming healthcare with digital appointments

Embracing automation can also boost personal contact in the places that matter

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The words ‘Transforming healthcare with digital appointments’’ with the words ‘digital appointments’ in yellow and the rest in white. They are set against an image of a person’s hands working on a laptop, with a stethoscope resting on the desk next to the laptop and closer to the camera.
(Image credit: Future / Unsplash - NCI)

Through digital transformation, organizations can slash time spent on manual processes and work more efficiently to address pressing issues. 

In healthcare, speeding processes up can improve and even save lives. Across the UK, NHS trusts are identifying a number of ways in which the 7.7 million-person waiting list can be tackled, and digital transformation has a clear role to play.

In healthcare, speeding processes up can improve and even save lives. Across the UK, NHS trusts are identifying a number of ways in which the 7.7 million-person waiting list can be tackled, and digital transformation has a clear role to play.

Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust is among the UK’s largest NHS trusts, with seven hospitals and 18,000 staff. Since 2020, it has worked with software vendor Netcall to implement a new digital platform for patients that reduces manual processing by 88%.

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In this episode, Jane and Rory are joined by Rob Child, program manager (Outpatients CSU) at Leeds Teaching Hospital NHS Trust, to discuss the trust’s digital transformation in more detail.

Highlights

“We went into every service to introduce them to what hub is, they needed a few bits of information about the clinics that we were going to surface through the hub. And then it just sort of went from there, we turned them on and patients started to receive notifications. And up until now, the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.”

“The whole concept of printing and sending a letter uses resources, so this has allowed us to free up administration time. And then what we do is we put those savings and that person's time they would have spent [and] we put them back onto the phones because we know we have huge backlogs of people trying to get through to ring us.”

“In terms of the challenge, it was just making sure people understood what it was and what it wasn't. So we're still on that journey with dental in terms of, they've had lots of clinician meetings about what you're going to tell patients and things like that. So we just  continue to work through, but again once people get it, and once people experience it, they love it.”

Footnotes

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Rory Bathgate
Rory Bathgate
Former Features and Multimedia Editor

Rory Bathgate was Features and Multimedia Editor at ITPro until 2026, overseeing all in-depth content and case studies. He also co-hosted the ITPro Podcast with Jane McCallion, swapping a keyboard for a microphone to discuss the latest learnings with thought leaders from across the tech sector.

In his free time, Rory enjoys photography, video editing, and good science fiction. After graduating from the University of Kent with a BA in English and American Literature, Rory undertook an MA in Eighteenth-Century Studies at King’s College London. He joined ITPro in 2022 as a graduate, following four years in student journalism. You can contact Rory on LinkedIn.

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