West Midlands Ambulance Service
Boosting ambulance crews’ productivity with Microsoft technology
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Every second counts for ambulance services. Our technology experts have enhanced the digital skills of staff at the UK’s West Midlands Ambulance Service University NHS Foundation Trust (WMAS) to develop applications which boost productivity and ultimately give crews more time with patients.
WMAS is one of ten ambulance Trusts in England. Like its counterparts, many of its internal processes depend on paper forms, whether it’s teams getting ambulances ready for their next shift, or replacement of kit and uniform. WMAS knew digitising these processes would boost productivity by freeing up teams to spend more time with patients.
We want to be a leader in digital innovation among ambulance Trusts, and we particularly want to get beyond paper-based processes. We needed a way to digitise our work, but with resources tight, we needed it to be cost-effective.”
Facing up to productivity challenges
The NHS is facing a significant productivity challenge coming out of the pandemic, and ambulance trusts are no exception. “For the ambulance sector, a focus area for productivity improvement is the digitisation of key processes such as vehicle preparation, staff training, and administration overheads for paramedics,” explained Chris Nightingale, PA Ambulance Sector Lead. Although core operational functions such as triage, vehicle dispatch, and patient records are well serviced by digital solutions, there remain internal processes which remain overly bureaucratic and serviced by legacy IT applications or still rely on paper-based processes.
Liberating ‘citizen-developers’
Our digital and healthcare experts worked with the Trust to agree how best to transform digitally. It meant building apps to boost productivity by saving time. It also meant empowering staff themselves to build their own non-clinical apps, using Microsoft Power Platform. The platform uses ‘low code’, a simplified form of coding that significantly speeds up the process of app building.
It enables people who aren’t coding experts to create business apps. Operational leads such as paramedics know most about their day-to-day requirements, so empowering them to meet those needs by making them ‘citizen-developers’ – a term for operational people building apps – makes sense.”
We trained over 20 staff to develop applications using Microsoft Power Platform and supported the Trust’s digital team to put in place the processes and governance that allow the best apps to be used by the relevant WMAS teams. One of the most exciting examples is the WMAS driving instructor lead, who created a suite of simple applications allowing staff to log lessons and training modules, receive feedback, and produce training certifications without the need for paper processes.
In parallel, we developed more complex applications while working with the Trust to meet their needs. An example being the Digital Make Ready (DMR) app which helps vehicle preparation teams prepare ambulances for the next shift by standardising the vehicle check process and making sure they have all the vital equipment they need, from fully charged defibrillator batteries to the spinal boards used to carry injured patients.
Before, a member of staff would use a whiteboard as a checklist and a paper form as an audit tool. Now they follow a standard process set by managers, using an iPad’s camera to capture any issues with a vehicle, as well as recording the status of key assets.”
This process also informs the member of staff when an item needs replacing or servicing, so they’re getting more information than before. It’s cut overall time for the vehicle preparation process by around 30 percent, as well as creating an audit trail of every check.
In their recent inspection the Care Quality Commission (CQC) – the body that regulates and inspects health care providers in England – described the DMR process as “a best practice model” and other ambulance Trusts are already interested in this approach.
Showing the way to digitisation
The Trust has standardised this new way of working by formalising the contribution from its ‘citizen-developers’, so that app-building is a recognised activity for non-IT staff. We are currently working with the trust to explore the use of Microsoft Copilot, which allows developers to build in AI tools such as chat-bots to their applications.
The Trust is now spreading learning from the project across other ambulance Trusts.
This work has created a new way for us to innovate, as well as empowering our people. We are passionate about driving digital innovation in our sector and sharing what we’ve learned with fellow ambulance Trusts. We have seen tangible benefits from the work to date, not only from a productivity perspective, but also positive feedback from crews when they see processes innovate based on their suggestions.”
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