Kingston picks BigHand from framework

Kingston Hospital NHS Trust has chosen BigHand for a digital dictation project that will be used to reduce the turnaround time for GP letters from outpatient clinics to five days.

BigHand software will be used by 300 authors and secretaries at the trust, which is also looking to improve efficiency and support foundation status and commissioning for quality and improvement initiatives.

At the moment, the trust uses a mixture of analogue tape and digital recording to capture letter content, which leads to delays at a number of points in the workflow, including the delivery of dictations for transcription and the sign-off of completed letters.

In addition to removing these bottle-necks, it hopes to improve information governance with the BigHand deployment, by removing the risk of tapes being lost or broken.

The trust used a new framework for digital dictation, voice recognition and outsourced transcription services that can be accessed through its awarding authority, NHS Commercial Solutions, NHS Procure and the East of England Collaborative Procurement Hub.

However, it also ran a ‘mini competition’ to check the system fitted its requirements.