Research indicates NHS EFM staff spend an average of 11 hours each week navigating disparate information sources for answers to common challenges. Addressing this inefficiency, a team from the University of Cambridge, supported by IHEEM, has developed an AI-driven platform ‘to provide instant, evidence-based answers to technical queries’. Carl-Magnus von Behr, Director of innex.ai, unveiled the system at the recent IHEEM Wales Regional Conference at the ICC Wales. Here he, CTO and co-founder of innex.ai, Dr Jan Blümel, and final-year medical student and researcher at the University of Southampton, Alan Saji, report.
The innex.ai platform integrates a comprehensive database with a user-friendly chatbot interface, effectively reducing search times by 35%, and enhancing the quality of responses by 53%. This breakthrough promises not only to streamline access to information, but also to enhance collaboration and decision-making across the NHS. Following a successful pilot at Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, where the platform demonstrated significant benefits in operational efficiency and compliance with regulatory standards, the platform is now set to expand to more pioneering NHS Trusts. This expansion will equip more teams with the essential tools to overhaul their information management practices, ensure rigorous compliance, and foster a more collaborative environment within the built environment of the NHS.
High-quality facilities are crucial for providing safe healthcare services, ensuring patient care, and safeguarding staff health and wellbeing. Sadly, a substantial portion of healthcare infrastructure across the UK is severely outdated, and grapples with a substantial maintenance backlog of £11.6 bn (up 13.6% year-on-year) due to chronic underinvestment.1,2
Additionally, workforce challenges exacerbate these problems, with roughly 34% of the estates and facilities management (EFM) workforce aged 55 or above, and a higher sickness absence rate among EFM staff, at 7.5%, compared with 4.9% across the broader NHS workforce.3 The NHS Staff Survey 2023 highlights the many challenges faced by EFM staff, many of whom reported lower levels of satisfaction, especially in the areas of feeling rewarded and included in workplace matters. Notably, there were significant gaps in the scores for 'We are always learning', and 'We are a team' compared with national averages. This dissatisfaction is mirrored in the higher leaver rate of 7.6% among EFM staff, which is higher than the overall rate of 7.2%.4
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