Innovation takes time, hard work, and is rarely plain sailing – that’s why it’s so important to share examples of best practice with fellow services.

MS’ rapidly evolving landscape makes it difficult enough just to stand still, let alone innovate to move services forward.

But a cross-department team from the University Hospital Southampton (UHS) have done just that with My Medical Record (MyMR), an online patient-held digital health record currently being used by around half of the service’s 1000-plus MS caseload.

The project, which is ready to be picked up, adapted and rolled out across the country, took the QuDoS Innovation in Digital Services category at November’s recognition event.

Mavis Ayer and Carrie Day, MS nurse leads at the UHS, said the team were overjoyed to have the opportunity to share their work.

“We were very pleased and very proud to win the category. It makes you feel as though all your hard work has paid off and that it was worth doing. We knew MyMR was a great platform, but so many people are doing so many other great things, so of course we were nervous,” said Mavis.

“I hope this isn’t too cliched, but it wasn’t really about the winning, it was about getting the work out there. It feels good to know that other people are interested in what we are doing and might want to replicate it.”

Sharing routes to success

Sharing best practice is a passion of Mavis’, who trained as a nurse in the Philippines before moving to the UK in 2000.

“If you have something that you think is great, I firmly believe that you have to share it. Historically, people have been protective over what is theirs, but I have always just shared everything whether it’s a protocol or a set of slides for a presentation.

“Although protecting your intellectual property is important, it’s also about making sure that everyone can benefit sharing best practice. We need to do that because we all have the same goal.”

Everyone – the sharing service, the receiving service and, ultimately, the patient – stands to gain from learning from each other’s successful approaches, she added.

“Our patients are very well informed, and they know what’s happening from one centre to the next.

“They want and need to be empowered to make decisions as to where they want to be treated. And if you are a centre that shares good practice, the patients appreciate that,” she added.

Tackling evolving challenges

Innovation isn’t without its challenges, though, said Mavis, who was a neurosurgical ward manager for eight years before specialising in MS.

“The landscape in MS is evolving all the time, and every year there is something we need to change or adapt to. It can be hard to keep up.

“There are so many demands on services, and sometimes it can feel as though as soon as one change has happened, there’s another one to get through. The challenge sometimes is taking people with you, because they can just get fed up of change when they are so busy.”

The UHS team, which worked with the dedicated UHS MyMR team and NIHR CLAHRC Wessex to integrate the digital platform into their service, face this challenge head on.

“I think people want to see things happening, rather than just talk about it. We can only try to see if something works and if it doesn’t, then it’s back to the drawing board,” she said, adding that MyMR had originally been used in cancer before being adapted for people with MS and other long-term conditions.

“We launched MyMR last year, but we had been talking about it for two or three years before that. We knew it was a good idea, but we didn’t have time.

“But then we just thought: ‘come on, it will help with our practice and the service so let’s just do it’. It was a lot of work but now it is up and running it will save us time and help us provide a better service.”

UHS now wants to further develop the system, which provides patients with practical information, access to their test results and contact with the team, for disease modifying drug (DMD) monitoring.

By their own admission it “will be a lot of work” but the time investment will be worth it in the long run, Mavis said, adding that it helped to spread the responsibility for projects over a group of people so as not to overwhelm any one individual.

Spreading the word

More than anything, the 2019 QuDoS Innovation in Practice winners want to let others know that MyMR can be rolled-out across the country. It’s NHS-funded and has all the necessary data and privacy compliance approvals.

Said Mavis: “Innovation needs a lot of investment – not just money, but time. There’s no point reinventing the wheel. If there is something out there that already exists and works well, why not share it?”

In 2020, UHS’ IT team will continue a nationwide MyMR roadshow. To find out more or to request a demonstration, email the team at mymedicalrecord@uhs.nhs.uk

• Read the MyMR case study here to find out more about the practicalities, challenges, implications of adopting the platform into your service.