Omnicell's new partnership which will transform how medications and hospital supplies are managed at scale

Ed Platt, UK Sales Director for Omnicell UK&I

“Earlier this year, Omnicell announced a new partnership with Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, London to develop a technology-enabled inventory optimisation and intelligence services. This project is the first of its kind at this scale and I wanted to share my excitement and thoughts on this new development!

Some Trusts within South East London Integrated Care System (ICS) are already using Omnicell’s dispensing systems to manage inventory and medication, but this new partnership will provide the ICS with a regional wide platform solution, meaning that all four Trusts within the ICS will benefit from the automated solutions and insights.

One of the aspects of this project that really excites me is the data that we will be able to leverage from the solutions that we’ve mapped out across each site. A key part of this work will be deep interoperability with EPIC, Cerner and AllScript – a move that will provide visibility and data insights to a level of detail that Trusts’ have never had before. The unsurpassed part is that these insights can lead to pro-active steps to improve patient care, for example the interoperability with existing hospital systems will help identify any likely shortages of medicines and highlight this visibility of medicine and expected usage with real time risk alerts and opportunity identification. Data driven from our hardware solutions will help to ensure that the right medication is available in the right place, which will help to; reduce drug errors; reduce delayed doses; speed up time to first dose and reduce incidents of missed doses. In the UK 1 in 5 patients miss a dose of prescribed medication, data will help us to identify why, when and how this happening.

The insights derived from data for managing inventory management will also be critical to day-to-day operations and patient care. Data derived from our hardware and software solutions will provide an invaluable audit trails, so that Trusts’ will be able to track hospital and pharmacy supplies from when received at the back door to the point of patient care. Data will also help Trusts’ understand how to reduce stock and where in the hospital stock is and isn’t used, which in turn will lead to significant cost savings and ensure that stock is available when and where it’s needed.

We’ve been working with South East London ICS to understand their workflows and various challenges in great detail. This is so that we can map and match our suite of hardware and software solutions to complement and support existing processes in each department and ensure the solutions are easy to use and effective, so that users can get the optimum result.

As a result of this ground-breaking project and partnership, myself and the Omnicell team hope that invaluable clinical staff will save a significant amount of time spent on logistical and administration tasks, so they are free to spend more time focusing on face-to-face patient care.

Ultimately, I am thrilled to have the opportunity to work with Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, a likeminded partner who shares a goal of driving the autonomous pharmacy vision and improving patient safety and driving efficiencies at scale. I'm hugely excited and I will be sharing updates on this project which I hope inspires other healthcare professionals to take advantage of the solutions that are available right now in the market to give them greater visibility and insights to improve healthcare for everyone. Watch this space!”

Contact Omnicell to find out more here