Moved and proud that the ten millionth survey was registered in Vestfold

DPS Vestfold is the largest DPS in the country. Therefore, it is perhaps natural that the ten million milestone happened there. – There are many assessments conducted in adult psychiatry all the time here. The staff were very happy when they got cake today, actually a little proud, says Mette Balandin, advisor in ICT at the e-health section.

Sykehuset i Vestfold has a long history and is today spread across several locations. The main operation is in Tønsberg. They have around 4,100 full-time equivalents and 5,400 employees. They are also veterans in the CheckWare context, ICT advisor Mette Balandin has been involved throughout.

– I was part of mapping number one at Sykehuset i Vestfold in 2017. It happened here at DPS Vestfold in Sandefjord. I remember there was a patient in the inpatient ward who answered the SCL 90. Then I spoke with department head Arild Aasen, who was in charge of everything at that time. He called as soon as they had seen that the response had arrived: 'Now you are historic!', he said. That brought some tears, Mette says.

New workflow without paper

We fast forward seven years to the present. DPS Vestfold continues to make history. Mapping number ten million is called "LOVEPROM - WELCOME", and the form was filled out in connection with the treatment "Mental health and addiction".

This is where we have used CheckWare the longest. All forms were on paper before we got started, and we had to use a bit of persuasion to get the clinicians on board initially. They were used to handing out paper forms and conducting their structured interviews on paper, scoring them themselves, rewriting notes neatly, and possibly scanning in graphs, etc. Many perhaps didn’t want to trouble patients with digital solutions and probably thought paper was easier.

Mette Balandin says the mood began to change a few years ago.

– When we started with LOVEPROM (the Share with Me project), something happened. That’s when we began to receive many systematized assessments in advance. We continually motivated by explaining that the answers coming in would be useful in the first appointment and provide knowledge about the patient and sharpen any questions the clinician might have. It became very clear to the clinicians over time that this actually helped, she says.

Rapid growth within somatics

Kathrine Berntsen is an ICT advisor at Sykehuset i Vestfold, and her role is to act as the link between the technology environment and the clinics. She has been most involved in the somatic department, and her first encounter with CheckWare was implementing it in the somatic pathway in Vestfold, including innovation projects for an eCOPD project and a virtual home hospital for children.

Read about digital follow-up of premature babies at Sykehuset i Vestfold.

– Today, we actually have the highest demand within somatics, especially regarding somatic pathways in digital home monitoring and in focus areas around user-controlled outpatient clinics. With us, we have become more digitally mature. Additionally, the collaboration with CheckWare as a supplier has probably become smoother over the years. The speed has notably increased because users expect to have services delivered faster, she believes.

– The hospital has decided to increase internal competence in CheckWare. Today, we have resources who can both create plans, design questionnaires, and set up pathways, so we become quite self-reliant. This is very important because we want to work closely with our clinicians, she says.

Today, five people at the hospital work dedicatedly with CheckWare alongside other tasks at the hospital.

– We see great value in meetings with clinicians, that we can make changes ourselves quickly in the solution. They give us immediate feedback, and we have been able to adjust along the way, which has been very valuable! It has also enabled us to quickly launch new pathways if there have been urgent requests, she says, adding that previously there was a more traditional project approach in place.

– It could take up to a year before we dared to release anything into production, whereas for the latest pathway we worked intensively for four weeks. We have reassured the clinicians that we have already improved the solutions once. This is probably a bit unusual for many of the clinicians we work with, but they understand that this is a much more efficient way to develop digital solutions, says Kathrine.

Collaboration across health trusts

One of CheckWare’s most important goals is that customers learn from each other and continuously adopt different solutions. They simply want more self-service. In Helse Sør-Øst, a network has been established with an active chat channel where members can throw questions to other health trusts and immediately get answers about whether solutions already exist in specific areas.

– 'Does anyone have something on this?' I might write. You quickly get answers about where they are in the process: whether it’s just a project idea they’re working on, if they have started a concrete project, have finished solutions, etc., says Kathrine Berntsen, explaining that they adopt pathways from each other and adapt them to local needs.

– I always first check which other trusts might have worked on what we are planning. Often, others have solved exactly this need. We think very similarly across the hospitals, so it’s a shame to build something from scratch if others are already fully engaged in developing the same thing. After all, the patients at the health trusts are notsodifferent, she says.

Mette explains that the situation among the clinicians has been completely turned upside down compared to when they started with CheckWare seven years ago. Today, it is impatient employees who are continually demanding new digital solutions.

– Right now they are waiting for some digital forms that the professional department has not yet released. They see that it takes a long time to do the same on paper and want it transferred to a digital solution as soon as possible. Having it digital also means it goes directly into the journal, instead of dealing with lots of paper that needs to be scanned. That takes longer and is much more vulnerable, Mette concludes.

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