Digital Transformation with a Difference: How the Northern Adelaide Local Health Network co-designed a Pregnancy Online Platform that actually works.

Personify Care's digital patient pathways platform unburdens midwives, detects early-pregnancy risks, and empowers pregnant women to navigate their pregnancy and care at the Northern Adelaide Local Health Network (NALHN), where the Women and Children's Division and the NALHN Health team have taken a novel approach of supporting clinical staff to be the 'digital leads' in its successful adoption.

The novel approach, taken by NALHN to this digital transformation initiative, invited midwives and obstetricians to become 'digital leads' - this ensured that clinical teams were in control of their workflows and protocols from the outset. Through its unique collaboration with Personify Care, NALHN retains ownership and control of their clinical protocols whilst leveraging data-driven patient pathways. The result has rapidly reduced the administrative burden on their midwives, whilst enabling personalised support for pregnant women.

The Pregnancy Online Platform NALHN (POPN) digital pathways deliver information that's specific to a woman's stage of pregnancy and automatically captures and screens clinical data-points from consumers to support existing clinical workflows. This ensures rapid identification of consumers who are in need of additional tests or support before their first face to face appointments with their midwives. For clinical staff, the digital transformation of their workflows has increased attendance rates, reduced waitlists for appointments, and enhanced midwifery care.

Not only is the clinician-led approach unique, the successful implementation of the digital pathways comes from the "digital enabler" role of the NAHLN Digital Health team who focus on enabling frontline midwives and obstetricians to co-design consumer Pathways.

"By working collaboratively with our digital partner Personify Care to support 'digital leads' within each clinical team and decentralising the digital transformation of the patient pathways; we've ensured that the solution meets the needs of our staff and consumers, fits within our digital strategy, while rapidly supporting the maternity team to have an immediate benefit to their service delivery models". says Arindam Chaudhuri (Executive Director Digital Health, NALHN).

"The result has been a positive, rapid implementation of secure digital pathways that provide
immediate results for consumers and clinicians alike.

The maternity team has thrived with the autonomy of the consumer-focused co-designed model we've adopted. Our midwives and clinical staff are the experts when it comes to how to support our consumers and ensure we improve our clinical workflows. This provides us with a meaningful way to accelerate our digital transformation strategy." says Mr Chaudhuri.

Feedback from users, collected via the Personify Care platform has been overwhelmingly positive according to Julia Dalton PhD, Midwifery Lead at NALHN for POPN.
"91% of users who have previously given birth with NALHN consider POPN to be the same,
if not much easier than their previous triage experience," said Dr Dalton.

For Amy who is in her first pregnancy, she has found the information and updates provided
through POPN useful.

"Your first pregnancy is so overwhelming, so being able to receive information on the type of
care I will receive and general information on common symptoms and experiences in pregnancy was really useful."

"I was able to read through this information at my own time and go back to it when needed.
Importantly for me, I was able to digest this information in my own time and attend my first
antenatal appointment with prepared questions for my midwife." said Amy.

"The collaboration between the Women and Children's Division and the NALHN Digital Health team with Personify Care's pathway design teams demonstrates a breakthrough model for delivering on the promise of digital transformation in healthcare. By unlocking the expertise inherent within frontline clinical, nursing and midwifery teams in relation to what's best for their patients and what will work in their unique clinical settings - leadership teams can accelerate the execution of their digital agendas whilst simultaneously reducing burden on frontline staff and enhancing care for their consumers - says Ken Saman, CEO of Personify Care.

The digital transformation of the antenatal protocols is the first patient cohort to access
Personify Care's patient pathways at the NALHN. Based on the current success of POPN, the same digital transformation model is being considered to support women for the rest of their pregnancy journey, in addition to other patient cohorts for a range of elective surgery specialties across NALHN.

Attn: Lucille Webster
Personify Care
Suite 31, Stone & Chalk, Allied Health Building
Lot Fourteen, North Terrace
Adelaide 5000
Australia

Personify Care is a health tech company that offers digital patient pathway solutions for hospitals, clinics, and clinical research. Their platform allows clinical and administrative teams to convert their existing protocols into digital pathways to improve the visibility of patients' pre-procedural preparation and post-discharge recovery. This drives workflow and process efficiency and enables clinical staff to focus their time on high-value care while enhancing the patient's healthcare experience.

This release was published on openPR.