My Topol fellowship problem / project:

Our University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire methodology of better never stops and patient first is based upon principles of lean healthcare founded by Virginia Mason, a hospital in Seattle, that has been through a journey of learning from the Toyota Production System in Japan to overcome challenges to become one of the safest hospitals in the world.

Over the next 12 months I will create an app which will include all the improvement tools being digitally available. This will impact on how we currently record our direct observations as we will be moving towards digitally enabled services, removing the need for pen and paper to ensure a sustainable angle to improvement and creating an improved, more efficient process. This app will have a feature in which it will automatically calculate overall lead time (time taken for a process start to finish), and also cycle times (time for each process or walk time within the overall lead time), currently a time consuming process. It will have the ability to convert minutes into seconds and transfer this data into standard work sheets and percent load charts. These analyse the data in different ways to clearly show how much waste is within operator processes and how much time is value added. The app will also enable the user to calculate takt time and for this to be transferred automatically to all relevant documents within that process. Takt time is the rate at which you need to complete a product to meet customer demand. The app will also allow for a digital current and future value stream map to be created in which data can be transferred from previous data collected and be accessible and sent digitally via email to all. Currently we have to scan in our documents for these to be sent to relevant parties. By having the tools and educational resources readily available, I hope it will be easier for employees to feel empowered to make change within their areas. The app will also have a functioning booking system, allowing users to book coaching sessions with our facilitators and specialists in regards to their ongoing improvement work.

I am a Kaizen Promotion Office Specialist, my role is foremost in improvement. I help to facilitate process change by driving everyday behaviours to be challenged into new ways of thinking to empower staff to feel able to make improvements in their departments. We focus on removing waste built into repetitive processes to ultimately provide lean healthcare.

I have also worked at national level for NHS Horizons, part of the transformation directorate to deliver large scale transformational change. I have been involved in projects such as the global online quality improvement programme School 4 Change Agents and #SolvingTogether an online crowdsourcing platform that allows for ideas to be captured, shared and assessed, before they are prototyped and tested supporting the priorities for health and care.

I am a Cardiac Nurse by background with over 8 years of experience in Coronary Care, Cardiac Catheter suite nursing and my former role as a Cardiac Nurse Practitioner in the Emergency Department and acute medical footprint. I have a keen interest in equality, diversity and inclusion and reducing health inequalities. I am a member of British Sikh Nurses, a group formed with the sole aim of bridging the gap between health and care and the south Asian community, in terms of delivering cardiovascular health education and prevention and CPR workshops. I am passionate about being involved in progressing the digitalisation of NHS services for the future and looking forward to bringing as many people along on the journey.