6PM ‘helping NHS to cut costs’

An integrated records management system developed by 6PM will enable the UK National Health Service to save up to 80 per cent on costs related to the management of patient health records, 6PM chief executive Ivan Bartolo told a stockbrokers’ meeting recently.

The system, which features paper records tracking and electronic document management, was described as “a solution for today’s problems”. 6PM is integrating market leading technologies to deliver business solutions.

IRM is an integration of the best of paper management solutions and the electronic document management solutions on the market.

The paper management platform has been branded as 6PM’s Intelligent File and Inventory Tracking solution and has been implemented at Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust. St George’s NHS Trust has signed a contract to roll out the solution this year.

St George’s, which employs more than 5,000 people, is the largest teaching hospital in the UK. Tracking and organisation of the medical records at the hospital cost an estimated £5 million.

In total, there are 175 people employed in the department where 20 alone are in charge of looking for lost records. Another 45 employees pick up the files and file them in numerical order.

Thanks to IRM, a trolley full of files which used to take three hours to file on shelves, will now be filed in five minutes. Files are then tracked through a Motorola RFID system as are transported around the hospital by strategically placed RFID sensors.

Deputy CEO Steve Wightman said that the £2 million contract is the result of 18 months of business development. He added that 6PM is now well on track with its product solutions business and aims to achieve its 2013 targets for the UK by June or September at the latest.