Improving efficiency and patient outcomes at North London NHS Foundation Trust
Learn why NLFT launched a Digital Academy to transform digital capability, become more data-driven, and improve service user experience.
Industry
Healthcare
Headcount
6,000+
100%
of employees understand how their learning contributes to Trust strategy
100%
understand how learning will support their professional career goals
45 hours
time saved per month by one learner
The goal
North London NHS Foundation Trust (NLFT) provides mental health and wellbeing support to local communities across Barnet, Camden, Enfield, Haringey, and Islington. Services include children and young people’s mental health services, prison services, forensic services, eating disorders and drug and alcohol recovery.
In recent years, demand for mental health services has soared, resulting in acute financial and resource pressures for service providers – making it an essential priority for NLFT to leverage the benefits of data and technology, and equip staff with the skills to drive innovation and improve patient experience.
“Investment in data and analytics is one of our key priorities for the next five years - and one of the key themes of our digital strategy. There are huge pressures in terms of recruitment and retention, and there is a national agenda around improving productivity and efficiency. Supporting our staff to interpret data will directly help deliver improvements to patient care.”
Sarah Wilkins
Chief Digital and Information Officer at NLFT
Through their Digital Strategy, NLFT is striving to drive impact across five key themes:
- Delivering excellent digital services: providing high-quality, secure and reliable digital services, allowing staff to deliver the best possible care.
- Becoming a data-driven organisation: leveraging clinical and business intelligence to improve health outcomes and decision-making at every level.
- Building smart infrastructure: exploring cloud-hosted solutions, hybrid server architectures, and smart building designs that enable agile, secure, and efficient care delivery.
- Exploiting AI technologies: to improve operational efficiency, reduce costs, and deliver better outcomes for service users.
- Fostering a culture of innovation: building a digitally literate workforce capable of utilising cutting-edge technology to improve care and empower service users.
The solution
About the NLFT Digital Academy
In 2023, NLFT launched their Digital and Data Academy(opens new window), delivered in partnership with Multiverse and funded through the Apprenticeship Levy, helping them to build new skillsets in data, AI, and transformation.
Learners from every division of the Trust span a range of clinical and operational functions – from Support Officers, Service Managers, Analysts, to Clinicians and Nurses.
"Strengthening and developing digital literacy and leadership across our organisation is crucial for fostering a culture that promotes innovation and meaningful changes in patient care. This focus is a key aspect of our digital strategy and serves as the foundation for our collaboration with the Multiverse Digital Academy. We are committed to building a community and sharing best practices in digital innovation and learning within mental health supporting our teams in applying their newly acquired skills to improve patient care long after they complete their learning."
Emily Burch
Chief Nursing Information Officer at NLFT
Staff are strongly encouraged to share their new knowledge across the Trust. Regular Data, Digital, and AI Academy Roundtables, chaired by NLFT Chief Nursing Information Officer Emily Burch, bring together learners and leaders to share learnings and success stories.
“The insights shared through initiatives such as our roundtables and the best practice playbooks we are developing not only enhance our practices at NLFT, but also aim to serve as valuable resources for other Trusts seeking to drive innovation. By investing in our people and championing digital excellence, we are creating a workforce that is prepared to meet the challenges of the future, ensuring our services remain efficient, effective, and centered on patient needs."
Emily Burch
Chief Nursing Information Officer at NLFT
The results
Building a data-driven culture across NLFT
Teams across NLFT are seeing the benefit of new skills, driving impactful changes that enhance patient experience and operational efficiency. 100% of learners understand how the Academy contributes to the Trust’s strategy and supports their professional career goals.
“Multiverse has been an invaluable partner, and the Digital Academy has been transformational for our staff. It’s really opened their eyes to the power of data and how they’re using it, creating a huge impact for our services. We’re seeing staff becoming more confident – they’re proactively using data insights and asking important questions like “Have we thought about this? This is what we’re seeing in our service, is this true in other areas of the Trust?” It’s a real step change for us.”
Sarah Wilkins
Chief Digital and Information Officer at NLFT
“I’ve learned new skills that have enabled me to become a leader in driving impactful change that benefits both service users and colleagues. The benefits have been immense. I’ve been able to build significant confidence and see the team taking real ownership and pride over their data. I now have a voice that is heard and I look forward to seeing what my future career path holds.”
Sophie Macken
Business Support Officer at NLFT
Creating time savings for clinicians
By reducing time spent on manual data entry, teams across NLFT are finding ways to increase time spent with patients.
Mitasha’s story
Using her skills gained through the Multiverse Business Transformation Fellowship, London Prisons Service Lead Mitasha analysed the current reporting in her department – and found that several team leads were spending 2-3 days per month fulfilling mandatory, time-intensive reporting requirements as part of the Care Programme Approach.
After conducting iterative testing, Mitasha implemented improvements to the reporting process that collectively saved team leads 45 hours per month. NLFT has been invited to share learnings nationally with other healthcare providers in Healthcare in Justice to roll out a similar process in their services.
Improving the patient experience
Ferenkeh’s story
Ferenkeh, a Consultant Social Worker, tackled a significant challenge facing Barnet Inpatient Mental Health Wards: a high number of patients who were clinically ready for discharge, but waiting for care assessments. Addressing delayed discharges is a priority for NLFT to improve patient experience.
Using his analytical skills gained through the Business Transformation Fellowship programme, Ferenkeh engaged with local authority service managers to pinpoint bottlenecks in the discharge process, particularly around communication and documentation. He proposed enhancements to the documentation forms to ensure they captured all necessary information and streamlining the process.
By employing data visualisation techniques using PowerBI, Ferenkeh effectively illustrated the issues and tracked progress, reducing the number of active patients awaiting assessments from 25 to one, within a nine month period.
To ensure the sustainability of these improvements, Ferenkeh recommended establishing a dedicated discharge team in Barnet, who will continue to own the process.
Unlocking actionable insights from data
As employees become more proficient in using data tools like PowerBI, they’re able to streamline processes that previously required manual support from data specialists.
Nikitha’s story
Nikitha is a Business Intelligence Analyst at NLFT. She spotted that the team was receiving a high rate of queries related to readmissions – and decided to take a deep dive into the data.
Leveraging new skills in hypothesis testing and predictive analysis gained through the Data Fellowship Programme, she explored the impacts of key demographics like gender, ethnicity, and length of stay on readmission rate. The results suggested that gender had a significant impact on readmission rates, and indicated that tactical interventions may be required to reduce readmissions of male patients.
Nikitha’s findings will be shared with the Population Health team, who will investigate further and understand root causes at borough level, to recommend interventions to employ.
100%
of employees understand how their learning contributes to Trust strategy
100%
understand how learning will support their professional career goals
45 hours
time saved per month by one learner
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