How to: Communicate about Digital Clinical Systems…
EPRs / PHRs / HCRs / PEPs: If you work in comms in the NHS or clinical care over the past decade, you’ve probably come across one of these TLAs (three letter acronyms), or other versions, at some point.
Whatever your organisation calls it, you’ll either have been involved or are soon to be involved in the introduction of a digital clinical system.
I’ve worked on a lot of them, both when I was an in-house NHS comms practitioner, and as a consultant. Some of them have been entirely professionally-focused patient record systems; and some have been patient facing.
Most recently, we’ve been working with East Cheshire NHS Trust on a campaign to increase uptake of the NHS App – through which the Trust’s Patient Engagement Portal (PEP) is available.
Wherever your organisation is on its journey to digital maturity, you can bet your bottom dollar that you’ll be communicating to stakeholders, patients and public about something similar soon.
Here are some of the main things I’ve learned over the past decade or so, to bear in mind when it’s something you’re looking to do:
1. Take your time
Bringing in any kind of digital care record is a long, detailed, expensive process. It needs time to pan out.
Whilst it’s absolutely right to commit to transparency with your patients and staff; it’s also right to be honest about the process involved.
You may find that your project is at the “business case” stage; and there’s a clamour to tell the world about it.
Let’s just unpack that.
If you’re still at this stage, this means that your organisation is writing an incredibly detailed document that will go through numerous drafts, involving technical specifications, outline costings (which will likely involve conversations with multiple suppliers). It will need a detailed sign-off process before going to the Trust-board for approval.
Then it’s about agreeing the funding. Often not a simple process.
Let’s say this comes through without any hitches: then you’re into a procurement programme, which given the figures involved will rightly take a while to get right.
And then, once you’ve appointed a supplier, you’re talking about building a detailed, intricate digital system, that needs to not only work well for the user, but be as secure as possible, and inter-operate with a range of legacy IT systems you and your partner organisations still use.
And then….there’s piloting it, and testing it, and training staff to use it. All while running a busy, already over-stretched clinical environment.
At this point, it’s probably been about 18 months, and maybe it’s ready to launch.
So you get the picture. These things take ages. As they should. They’re important, and expensive.
So understand the timescales, be realistic about them, and build your communications activity (or lack thereof) around them.
2. Know and respect your audience
This really is Rule #1 for any comms activity. However, it’s really worth reinforcing that here.
Depending on the type of system you’re bringing in, it will definitely have a professional or staff audience. But if you have a patient facing interface (such as the NHS App) you’ll need to engage the public too.
In my experience, busy clinical professionals don’t have a huge amount of bandwidth for things that are 18 months off before they see any benefit from them. So it’s important to understand this, and make sure you’re engaging with them at the right time in the process (which is usually when you have something tangible to demonstrate).
If it’s the public, you need to put the hard yards in to understanding their expectations, needs, and fears.
Whilst engaging with the public about clinical digital systems, I’ve found some broad re-occurring themes:
People – in particular “older people” – are far more tech savvy and comfortable with digital technology than you might assume.
We’ve been booking holidays, doing banking, doing online shopping on our phones for years. These things are not the exclusive preserve of “young people”.
People are generally security-conscious, but not paranoid.
They understand how stuff works. I’ve regularly observed the acceptance that nothing is 100% risk-free; but also the view that a digital care record held in the cloud somewhere is far more secure than a piece of paper in a trolley that can theoretically be put back in the wrong place or have tea spilled on it.
They trust that their banking apps are safe, or are comfortable that the balance of greater convenience versus minimal (not zero) risk is in their favour. They have the same basic expectation of anything health-related.
People are impatient with things that don’t work first time.
Given how ubiquitous apps for dealing with general life (see above) are, there is a basic expectation that any new technology they’re being asked to engage with is reliable.
I enjoyed this piece on Digital Health recently that said that nearly a quarter of NHS App users surveyed don’t use it due to technical issues. So it really shows how important it is that your system works first time, and every time.
If your patient-facing solution has mastered the golden recipe of security, convenience, and, just as importantly, reliability, you’re on to a winner.
If not, wait until it has before you talk about.
3. Manage your expectations
I get it completely.
Your Director of Digital or ICT has been slogging and dragging themselves over hot coals for years to finally have the chance to implement a probably long-overdue digital transformation.
It’s the most important and exciting thing in their world, understandably so; and they want the world to share their excitement.
But here’s where cool heads need to intervene.
Referring back to Points 1 and 2, it is essential to approach it strategically, and play back where your audiences (both internal and external) are likely to be at.
The harsh reality is that they’re unlikely to share that excitement (sorry).
The key things to remember are:
Staff are busy.
They have no time for things that they aren’t going to experience for another 18 months. Getting carried away at the beginning of the process risks building cynicism or resentment when ‘just another thing’ is seen to be not living up to the hype.
Patients and public are already using lots of apps to manage their lives digitally.
Some may already be a bit mystified as to why they can’t manage their health and care online – so they might not be doing cartwheels at the news that they, finally, can.
To refer to the research reported on in Digital Health again, at least 36% of NHS App users surveyed would’ve liked to see additional functionality that wasn’t available to them.
This, sometimes, is the hard truth of communicating about something you love. The thing you’re pouring your heart and soul into may just be a bit “meh” to the outside world.
(Ask any middle-aged amateur indie musician who discovered GarageBand during lockdown…)
4. Focus on reassurance
In my experience, the key thing that everyone impacted by a new digital clinical system wants is reassurance.
For patients and the public, it’s about:
- Reassurance that it’s safe and secure.
- Reassurance that it’s reliable.
- Reassurance that it’ll make their lives easier.
For staff, it’s about:
- Reassurance that it will make things safer
- Reassurance that it’ll be easy to use and integrate into daily care
- Reassurance that it’ll work on the hospital wifi
- Reassurance that it won’t be difficult or time-consuming to learn how to use
For staff in particular, I’ve found this last point to be key. Very often there’s a desire to put messages out that a new system will replace all those annoying work-arounds that they’ve been using, and will open up a brave new world in care.
Now, to me that sounds great.
However, let’s remember Point 2.
If I’m a busy clinician working on, for example, an over-stretched acute ward, I might be used to my seemingly illogical work arounds, involving 4 different passwords and dog-eared Post-It notes stuck to aging PC monitors.
Any change from that, whilst it sounds good on paper, might actually add to stress-levels. It’s why the point around reassurance is so important.
“This will work. It will be easy to use. It will make the care you provide better and safer. And here’s how you’ll be supported…”
That might not feel like the basis of the next exciting, viral TikTok sensation; but it’s likely to be the message your colleagues need to hear.
5. Go big or go home* (*once you’ve done the other things)
If reading these previous points may have dampened your enthusiasm somewhat, don’t worry, the fun bit is next…
Getting to this point is all about getting the right framework in place, so that you’re confident that all your hard work in getting from business case to implementation will pay dividends.
Now, like most comms people, I shudder at the thought of asking the question “who’s this aimed at?” and receiving the answers of: “everyone” or “the general public”.
However, it may well be in the case of communicating about your new clinical system, that these aren’t bad guides.
As an example, back in 2021, we worked with Cheshire East Council and NHS Cheshire on introducing their new patient portal (called MyCareView), which was available to everyone in the Borough via the NHS App. If someone lived in the area, and was registered with a GP, they were part of the target audience. Similarly if they had an iOS or Android device they were relevant too. So in this instance, we were talking about an audience of several hundreds of thousands - a cohort as close to “everyone” as you’re likely to get.
So a large-scale above-the-line public campaign was absolutely the right and appropriate way to go. We used public realm advertising, social ads, a door-to-door print drop (to approximately 185,000 individual properties), PR, you name it. And it worked. By the time we were done we’d achieved over 40.5k registered users – which translated into a 635% increase.
I’m really proud of the work we produced for that campaign, and the current campaign we’re working on with East Cheshire NHS Trust. High quality, audience-led, creative comms are a fundamentally important part of the recipe. However, they’re only as effective as the solution they’re promoting.
Marrying really good quality comms campaign outputs with a solution that is reliable, safe, and easy to use: that’s the special sauce right there.
So really – it’s pretty simple. Get a solution that works. Focus on your users. Communicate with creativity and passion.
If we do these things, we’ll be a part of a pivotal moment in how health and care is delivered.
Need some support with the implementation of a new digital clinical system? We can help. Get in touch.
