Doncaster & South Humber

The Company

Doncaster & South Humber Healthcare NHS Trust is a UK government health trust providing a wide range of health services to a population of more than 600,000 people across Doncaster Metropolitan Borough and North Lincolnshire, as well as mental health and learning disability services in North East Lincolnshire. The Trust operates from over 60 community-based locations and nine hospitals.

The Challenge

Ian White, Head of Information at the Doncaster Trust, joined the organisation in 1993. Apart from a Patient Administration and a card system used for statistical purposes, the Trust had no "real" information systems to speak of. With in excess of 200 users, they also had no IT department nor any network setup so Ian was faced with the challenge of: 1) finding a solution that would cope and address these shortcomings and 2) showing people how the availability of information would benefit their work.

Ian comments: "What was important was not so much to provide information but to educate people on how it would benefit them. When I asked a number of people what sort of information they required many of them were quick to say 'No, I don't need that'. However once they were given access to the system they were some of the first to come back and say "listen Ian, is it possible to add such and such fields to this form so that we can get information about these topics too?" In order to cope with the lack of IT resources Ian, himself a programmer, started to look for a software package that would:

1. Allow them to develop applications very quickly;
2. Be easy to maintain, i.e. would allow other people who did not originally write the system to maintain it;
3. Have a realistic end user reporting facility.

Solution

Ian researched various options but found that DataEase was the only one that met these needs. He continues: "There was no point in us using VB or similar software which would require dedicated programmers to create and then maintain the systems. For example one of our data-entry operators at the time is now one of our best DataEase developers - this just would not have been easily achieved with other software."
"It was the flexibility of DataEase and its ability to react quickly to changes that were the key factors to us. We didn't have an IT department or several developers on hand to write and maintain applications and to respond to the demands of hundreds of users - we wanted to give them the power to do the changes themselves. If someone wanted a report or a change done, saying to them 'it will be ready in one week' was no good to them. Instead with DataEase I was able to say: 'you do it, I'll show you how'."
This flexibility and ease of use were proved when Ian submitted his proposal for a Psychiatric Patient System on 16th June 93. By 1st August, i.e. a month and a half later, the whole system had been implemented in DataEase Express (the first Windows version of DataEase).

The outcome

DataEase is now a fundamental component of what Doncaster NHS Trust does.
Over 150 applications have been built in the last 10 years, now using the latest version of DataEase, to answer the needs of some key areas, including:

Patient Client Based System
Community Based System
Mental Health System
Sexual Health System

Other applications include Home Loans, Wheelchair, Scheduling and Psychology.
Ian White has also been responsible for introducing a number of innovative systems including a Psychiatric Bar Code System, using the technology best suited to its requirements, and a District Community System where 300 District Nurses can keep track and report their home visits by phone, a 20-second process.

More applications are still being developed whilst existing ones are regularly maintained.

Ian concludes: "To me it is not so important the number of applications that we have developed but to highlight the flexibility of DataEase and what it has allowed us to do in these last 10 years. With no development department and over 200 users, it has enabled us to empower users to do what they need when they need it."