Mobile Solutions and Surveying Case Study

The Healthy Option – Healthcare Sector Uses PowerSurvey

PowerSurvey has now found a significant niche within the UK healthcare sector. Both NHS trusts themselves, and their appointed healthcare FM contractors, have taken to it in a big way for essential data capture at the point of service delivery. This has led to an improvement in the quality and consistency of the information collected, and a reduction in the cost of gathering it.
Some of the tasks which PowerSurvey is already successfully employed on in this sector include patient menu selection, cleaning and hygiene monitoring, linen supplies, portering, catering quality audits and staff/equipment relocation of an entire hospital to a new site. Most of these systems have been set up by the project staff themselves, using the standard PowerSurvey software. Detailed survey forms have been designed at the PC for download to handheld computers and immediate data capture in the field.

Owing to the straightforward, menu-driven nature of PowerSurvey on the PC, not a single line of programming code has had to be written, and the finished handheld applications have been fully implemented at departmental level. Little or no input has been needed from central IT departments, except where the final destination of the collected data has been a corporate mainframe system.

NHS sites to have benefited so far include Castle Hill Hospital Hull, Charing Cross Hospital London, County Hospital Hereford, Hammersmith Hospital, Kings College Hospital London and Queen Charlottes Hospital London. Others are expected to be added soon.

One of the pioneer healthcare users of PowerSurvey has been John Higginbottom of Sodexho Limited (formerly Gardner Merchant), the leading catering and support service provider in hospital contracts throughout the World.

John Comments: ‘ PowerSurvey has vastly improved the productivity within my quality assurance function, enabling a ‘Ward Food Service Audit’ to be completed every six weeks, on every one of the 66 wards across our five hospitals in Humberside. The captured data is then downloaded onto a database where we are able to complete comprehensive analysis. Whilst being cost effective, the system enables us to focus on continuous performance improvements while demonstrating ‘Best Value’ to our clients.’

It is clear that PowerSurvey is finding many friends in the healthcare sector. The high quality of the software itself, together with the comprehensive training and support services offered by DataBuild, make it a formidable force where strategic mobile computing operations are involved.