Winning the 2016 Talent Unleashed Award in Europe for Most Disruptive CIO/CTO, Rachel Dunscombe of Salford Royal NHS Foundation speaks about her role, how she impacts the trust and how it felt to win at the EU awards.
NHS (Bolton/Salford) – Salford Royal is the most digitally mature Trust in the NHS. The organisation is part of the Salford Royal Group as is Bolton NHS Foundation Trust. The Group provides acute, community, mental helath, social care, medical research and innovation services for the population of Manchester and companies globally.
Tell us a little about yourself?
I love my role in the NHS, in what is one of the only two excellent Trusts in terms of care quality and also the digitally most mature. My role is one of Transformation via digital technologies – in saying that most of the job is about people. Its about citizens, patients, carers, clinicians and colleagues. I took the challenge of dropping in at the deep end and providing Executive on call – this has been essential in building my credibility, relationship and showing that I am in this for the long hall during the hardest times. Its led me to managing queuing ambulances, making choices about closing A&Es and agreeing what should happen in the most difficult of circumstances.
What makes you stand out?
The key in a high risk environment such as healthcare to getting buy in to new and disruptive ideas is trust. Gaining the Trust of NHS clinicians has led me to doing some pretty ground breaking things such as training up clinicians as CIOs and training doctors and nurses to code. The only way I have done these things is to take the clinicians on the journey – ask them to stand in my shoes and I will stand in theirs operationally. Breaking down boundaries between the citizen and the system is also one of my quests. I’ve worked on a number of NHS hack events and have been one of the organisers of NHS Hack day. Spending a weekend with teenage mental health service users of our mental health service creating digital apps is incredibly rewarding and starts a conversation that takes the NHS in a new direction. The outcome of this session was fantastic and unexpected – the mental health nurses have now started using coding as a therapy for teenage clients.
What about your success to date.
The systemic results of the work are huge. We are one of only 2 NHS organisations with an excellent rating for quality and safety – and I am part of that value and innovation chain. As the most digital trust myself and my teams have achieved and maintain what is paper free high quality care. The work I have most recently completed with the team is the automated tracking and detection of Sepsis and Acute Kidney Injury. My teams have worked to implement algorithms from multiple data sources that can flag these health issues at the earliest possible point. This prevention work is unique in the UK and is saving lives.
How did it feel to win at the European Awards?
I’m just so delighted to win this award on a personal level but also for all the wonderful staff we have in the NHS making change happen and making digitisation happen. It’s probably the biggest challenge of any sector at the moment and we’ve got some really talented people and I feel really privileged to work with them and really privileged to win this award also.