NHS Lanarkshire’s evidence team launched the NHSL Guidelines App in May 2021 — a quality assured decision support tool and a single source of information for guidelines, medicines, referral pathways and Covid-19. The app is designed to support NHS Lanarkshire staff who use guidelines in their day-to-day work.
By the end of its first year of operation, the app attracted more than 35,000 active users, was viewed more than 430,000 times and more than 13,000 searches performed. More than 700 items (such as guidelines, pathways, scores, calculators and links to external resources) are at your fingertips.
The app continues to grow and the following key developments have already been achieved:
- Creating a mega-app: this tool is multi-disciplinary and brings together six independent toolkits (guidelines; medical scores and calculators; referral pathways; medicines guidance; antimicrobial guidelines and Covid-19) under one searchable interface. The project was accomplished within a very short timescale — in less than six months – and the team has worked effectively and collaboratively across NHS Lanarkshire and beyond to maximise the desired outcomes and design.
- Decommissioning NHS Lanarkshire clinical guidelines website and related systems: all relevant and reviewed guidelines have been successfully transferred over to the NHS Lanarkshire guidelines app. The app is now a single source of information for guidelines, medicines, referral pathways and Covid-19.
- Launching the NHS Lanarkshire guidelines formulary: this resource has 21 chapters and 171 web pages, linked to external sources where relevant, indexed with thousands of keywords to allow easy searching.
Comments and feedback continue to be welcomed. It is clear that the NHS Lanarkshire guidelines app is valued by staff. Some of the feedback includes:
- ‘The app helps me in my day-to-day work’;
- ‘What you have delivered is just brilliant’;
- ‘Very exciting and useful resource’.
Ania Matuszewska, systems librarian, said: “Good clinical guidelines can inform clinical practice and influence patient outcome. We are going mega with guidelines for NHS Lanarkshire quality ambitions by developing an easily and quickly accessible one-top-resource for different specialities.”
The NHS Lanarkshire guidelines app is a significant technological enhancement, ensuring a long-term solution for the health board. The app can be accessed on any device connected to the internet, and is available to download free from Apple App Store and Google Play.
