Building IT resilience

Leeds Children’s Hospital designated ‘Centre of Excellence in Supportive Cancer Care’

In 2021 The Paediatric Haematology and Oncology Service at Leeds Children’s Hospital was designated as a ‘centre of excellence in supportive care’ by the Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer (MASCC).

Leeds Children’s Hospital is the first children’s hospital in the world to be awarded this status and now joins other leading services around the globe to receive this designation including the Gustave Roussy Institute in Paris, the Institut Jules Bordet in Brussels and the Levine Cancer Institute, USA. ‘Supportive care’ refers to all the elements of cancer care which are not directly combatting the cancer itself such as the management of infections, prevention of nausea and vomiting, nutrition, physiotherapy, physiological, emotional and social support - all important elements of a patients cancer care.

Dr Bob Philips has played a key role in securing this designation and

commented: ‘We already know survival rates in Yorkshire for children with cancer are among the best in the world. This new recognition from MASCC shows that at Leeds we are not solely focussed on the treatment – we’re also making the process of living with and beyond cancer the best it can be with our team providing all aspects of research and care in one centre.’

Mr Colin Holton - Clinical Director at Leeds Children’s Hospital said: ‘On behalf of Leeds Children’s Hospital, we’re so very proud to be the first designated children’s hospital worldwide to achieve this status. It highlights how collaboratively the different specialities within our Haematology and Oncology team work to deliver the best outcomes for patients. This is a further example of excellence in clinical care at Leeds as we move towards the next exciting phase of building a new Children’s hospital over the next few years.’

Building resilience into Trust IT systems

Across LTHT, a number of different IT applications are used by our clinicians to help provide patient care. These applications depend upon computers, storage, networks and telephony systems which form the digital infrastructure for the Trust. Part of the DIT team’s role is ensuring that this infrastructure is resilient, safe and secure, supporting patient services now and in the future.

The Digital team is currently working with Microsoft to future proof PPM+, one of the Trust’s most important IT systems. Current work is looking at moving PPM+ to the Cloud, providing reliability, resilience and scalability while taking advantage of the flexibility of the Cloud to explore new features such as patient-entered data in electronic forms. New features like this have the potential to offer many benefits for the Trust, and also for patients, reducing appointment times, the need to travel and enabling patients to take a more proactive role in their treatment. This work is also central to the plans for the new hospitals, where patients, staff and guests will be surrounded with the digital infrastructure needed to support them in their journey through the hospital.