Senior doctors are urging people to protect themselves and their families from flu amid warnings that new cases may peak over the busy festive period. GP surgeries, A&E departments and hospital wards are all seeing an increase in flu cases with some schools and care homes also reporting suspected outbreaks.
Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty said: “The winter flu season has started early in the UK and it is important that everyone who is eligible gets the flu jab from their GP or pharmacist. The vaccine is the best defence against flu whilst practising sensible hygiene can reduce the spread of flu.”
NHS teams are working hard to deliver vaccines to protect people from flu but in many places they are having to rely on paper-based systems to manage vaccination programmes. These are typically labour intensive and inefficient processes that tie up many valuable hours in repetitive administrative tasks. Hardly time well spent when public health is at stake.
Inhealthcare has developed a new digital service with a number of NHS trusts to digitise the entire schedule for vaccination programmes. The service offers:
- Fully online self-enrolment using NHS verification
- Nudges for parents to encourage uptake
- Managed triage of children with needs and conditions
- Paperless immunisation session management
- Auto-syncing to GP systems.
Benefits include reduced risk, improved accuracy and reliability of data and thousands of hours saved in administrative tasks, allowing experienced staff to focus on working with more vulnerable groups.
Bryn Sage, chief executive of Inhealthcare said “With national support, this innovative approach to vaccinations could be rolled out quickly to all regions to streamline the immunisation process, provide new insights into take-up and most importantly increase participation, especially in the run-up to peak periods like Christmas.”