Qlik®, a leader in visual analytics, today announced Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh (WWL) NHS Foundation Trust has deployed the Qlik visual analytics platform to gain better insights from its data and drive efficiencies across the organization. By using Qlik, the Trust has been able to save and make millions in efficiency savings while also improving its quality of care. A recent and significant achievement has been in its emergency room department, which has decreased patient waiting times by thirty minutes, making it one of the top performing emergency departments in England – and one of the only ten Trusts nationwide to meet the UK Government’s performance targets last year.

WWL is a major acute Trust serving the people of the Wigan and its neighboring boroughs. Its aim is to continuously improve the services and facilities it offers patients, with a dedication to providing the best possible healthcare for the local population of over 300,000 people. With the NHS under increasing pressure to drive efficiencies while cutting costs, WWL’s Executives and Business Intelligence team needed to find a way to save costs while improving patient care. They decided to do this by identifying patterns in its existing data, developing a highly-visible, data-driven and intelligence-led Qlik analysis application.

The visual, easy-to-use Qlik application provides real-time intelligence to front-line staff and clinicians, giving a greater understanding of where patients are in their care throughout the hospital – improving discharge levels, reducing delays, and minimizing re-admissions. With this insight, the Trust can also plan for both long-term and short-term staffing as well as presenting a current view of the department and the areas surrounding it that affect patient flow. The visual management and alerts help to ensure patients are prioritized in the right order, achieving a reduced median length of stay by thirty minutes.

To make the application visible and accessible to all staff across the Trust – as well as patients and the public, a large 70-inch touchscreen has been installed in the emergency room. The dashboard displays the number of patients due through the door and number of those patients that are likely to need a bed. It also shows patient acuity and their historic admissions information to give a greater understanding of their likely recovery time, helping to prevent capacity issues. “The dashboard is accessible as well as easy to understand and use,” said Dr. Stephen Gulliford, Accident & Emergency Consultant, WWL. “It allows a clear, visible, real-time update of the situation across the Trust at any given time – from unscheduled care through to the provision and adjustment of appropriate workforce and resources to meet the demand.”

“Over the last few years, the Trust has produced a number of insightful, yet intuitive, Qlik apps that have helped changed both the culture of the organization and the perception of data. Data is no longer seen as just a way to monitor what’s happened yesterday but is now appreciated and seen as a key commodity in helping with pressures faced both today and the future,” said Mark Singleton, Head of Business Intelligence, WWL.

“Knowing how many patients are likely to be admitted provides the Trust with a forward look on bed availability and flags potential capacity issues in the days or weeks to come, something very pertinent to the financial challenges the NHS is facing with reductions in acute beds,” said Rob Forster, Director of Finance & IM&T and Deputy CEO, WWL. “All those who have seen the application have commented that they haven’t seen such sophisticated software in this environment and that’s why we strongly believe it is cutting edge innovation within healthcare. We are incredibly proud that it’s been produced by us, but we are even more proud of the difference it has made to our services and local population.”

Chief Executive, Andrew Foster, is delighted with the range of excellent visual analysis applications, which have been developed by WWL staff on the Qlik platform. “I am so impressed by these sophisticated, easy-to-use dashboards that I have a giant screen in my office to look at them. There is so much available literally at my fingertips – past performance by day, month and quarter; productivity by consultant; progress with CIPs and much, much more.”

“NHS Foundation Trusts nationwide are under constant pressure to drive efficiencies while cutting costs. WWL has shown that making the best use of existing data is a great way to achieve that,” said David Bolton, Director, Public Sector & Healthcare, Qlik. “Reducing waiting times to become one of the top performing departments in the country is an incredible feat – and truly shows the power of data analysis with the right platform. We’re thrilled to have helped the Trust achieve something that can, ultimately, help save lives – and look forward to working with them even more in the future to continue to help them gain data-driven life-saving insights.”

About Qlik
Qlik® is the leading visual analytics platform and the pioneer of user-driven business intelligence. Its portfolio of cloud-based and on-premise solutions meets customers’ growing needs from reporting and self-service visual analysis to guided, embedded and custom analytics, regardless of where data is located. Customers using Qlik Sense®, QlikView® and Qlik® Cloud, gain meaning out of information from multiple sources, exploring the hidden relationships within data that lead to insights that ignite good ideas. Headquartered in Radnor, Pennsylvania, Qlik does business in more than 100 countries with over 40,000 customers globally.

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