Phase 2 (Setup) activities

Phase 2 has a number of moving parts but essentially comes down to 5 key elements - procurement, technical integration, staff engagement, required approvals, and support processes. These are all the actions required prior to first clinical use of Concentric within the organisation.

Deliverables

• Clinical engagement, and training of initial users
• Technical integrations completed and released to production environment
• Required documentation and approvals in place (DPIA, Data Processing Agreement, Clinical Safety Case)
• Operational processes arranged (support, user management etc)
• Signed contract

Procurement

Most NHS Trusts and Health Boards procure via the Government Digital Marketplace (AKA the G Cloud 13 framework) but there are a number of different options available depending on local preference.

Technical integration

The approach to technical integration will have been decided during phase 1. During phase 2 this is actioned and the required testing is performed to ensure that it is ready to release to the production environment.

A technical architecture summary should be produced following integration, which will be shared with support prior to phase 3.

Clinical and theatre engagement

A series of sessions are arranged for clinician and theatre team engagement and training. At a high level this includes initial engagement sessions, train the trainer sessions, and admin user onboarding. The process and included number of sessions are detailed here.

An onboarding guide should be prepared so that it can be shared with each clinical user at account setup. This can be hosted by Concentric or locally. An example of local onboarding information (including details regarding integration with other local systems) is seen here - this is a template that can be replicated for your local use.

Training of initial specialties by the training team should occur during phase 2 following the train the trainer sessions.

In parallel a measurement strategy should be decided and baseline measurement started.

Information governance and clinical safety approval

Before Concentric can be used within the organisation there are a small number of local approvals required, the key ones relate to information governance and clinical safety.

A data protection impact assessment (DPIA) should be completed locally and in parallel a data processing agreement should be put in place between the two organisations.

To conform with the clinical safety standards in the UK the deploying organisation must consider the Concentric Health clinical safety case report and maintain a deploying organisation safety case report and hazard log (as per DCB0160 standard). Depending on local preference the relevant hazards may be added to a central safety case report for the organisation or a separate report can be maintained for the Concentric deployment.

Patient communications

Consent information is shared with patients digitally so that they have easy access to their personalised information, can give consent remotely, etc. A number of patients quite reasonably approach an email stating that it is from their clinician with scepticism. Patients are reassured when they can view some information about the Concentric process on the healthcare organisation’s website - a link to this information is then included in digital communications to the patient.

Support process setup

Prior to go-live the support process should be agreed with the local IT support team. First-line support is managed within the healthcare organisation as the majority of support queries relate to internal issues, such as setting up accounts, user queries for the training team, internal network problems, etc. Following a defined process, if there are issues that are within Concentric’s control these are passed through.

In parallel, the support team should be set up with automatic alerting of issues with the Concentric application and business continuity procedures should be put in place.

A business continuity plan should be written, detailing what should be done in scenarios where Concentric is not able to be used as normal.

Consent policy update

Organisations will usually introduce changes to the consent policy in two phases - firstly during phase 2 of the delivery playbook as the organisation prepares for first clinical use of Concentric, and secondly at transition to business as usual where digital consent is the default mechanism of consent for treatment.

Release to production environment

When each of the parallel processes within phase 2 are complete then Concentric can be released to the production environments (both on the Concentric application side and any integrations).

Content template modifications (optional)

During phases 2 and 3 clinical content updates may be requested by clinical teams via the internal project manager and a process is followed to implement changes. This may include updates to template information or may simply be the addition of local information leaflets. For addition (and subsequent editing or removal) of local information leaflets the process is outlined here.