The team behind the Healthier Together West Yorkshire (HTWY) website – of which Bradford Teaching Hospitals was at the heart of – has been highly commended at this year’s Health Service Journal (HSJ) Digital Award for ‘Improving out of hospital care through digital’.
These awards were the first ever HSJ Digital Awards 2023, recognising excellence in digitising, connecting, and transforming health and care.
The HTWY website was launched a year ago and provides hundreds of easy-to-read pages of up-to-date information (including several videos) on health conditions covering childhood and adolescence.
It was shaped by a wide-ranging panel of healthcare experts from across the region including Carly Plunkett, Bradford Teaching Hospitals‘ ‘hospital at home’ ambulatory care experience (ACE) nurse – who was responsible for the website’s local implementation across Bradford.
Bradford GP, Dr Nicole Alshorn who was one of the project’s two clinical leads while Consultant Paediatrician, Mat Mathai and Consultant in Paediatric Emergency Medicine, Dr Bob Basu, also sat on the website’s steering group.
Organisers believe that the HSJ Digital Awards will provide the perfect springboard for widespread adoption of specific initiatives, and – following on from NHS England’s Year of the Digital Profession in 2022 – will inspire digital leadership across the country.
Dr Mathai, said: “The team were delighted to have got this far within the first year. This ‘highly commended’ award from the HSJ is fantastic news as we want the website to be the number one place that parents, carers, professionals think of when they need help, advice or information on child and adolescent conditions so that people can navigate our complex health and social care system even better than before.”
“I believe the website’s success has been down to the strategy of getting all experts across West Yorkshire to develop content and work collaboratively, with a cross-system approach, which included the voices of children and young people. This approach was inspired by the original vision of the ‘Healthier Together’ creator, Dr Sanjay Patel, Consultant Paediatrician in Southampton, who has been incredibly successfully at replicating the site across many areas of the UK.”
HSJ editor, Alastair McLellan, added: “For several years, we’ve noticed that more and more projects, with digitisation at their core, were being entered into other awards within the HSJ’s awards programme – and it increasingly felt that this emerging and important category needed an awards ceremony of its own.
“So, what better opportunity to launch the HSJ Digital Awards than in the follow up to NHS England’s recent Year of the Digital Profession. It was no surprise to us that the level and quality of entries in the inaugural HSJ Digital Awards were absolutely outstanding, presenting our panel of judges with some difficult decisions.
It therefore gives me great pleasure to personally congratulate the Healthier Together West Yorkshire (HTWY) website team on being ‘highly commended’ in the Improving out of hospital care through digital’ category at the 2023 HSJ Digital Awards.
The full list of winners and those highly commended can be found on the HSJ website.