Video Customer Story

Chesterfield Royal Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

Chesterfield Royal Hospital, a key healthcare provider in North Derbyshire, operates a main hospital and supports rural primary care services. The hospital has been committed to providing high-quality care, but by 2025, it became evident that their 20-year-old governance system was holding them back. The outdated platform lacked flexibility, making it difficult to adapt to modern demands for integration, efficiency, and patient safety improvements.

The decision to implement Ideagen InPhase initiated a transformational era for the hospital. With Robert Conyers and Kate Beardsley from the Patient Safety Team at the helm, the trust has begun leveraging Ideagen InPhase to centralize workflows, improve data accessibility, and modernize systems to better meet the needs of staff and patients alike.

Robert Conyers and Kate Beardsley from the Patient Safety Team

What the customer says:

“Every day we find something new that improves how we process data.”

Want to learn more?

Contact the team

Case Study

The hospital’s legacy system, Datix, presented numerous challenges. Over the years, the system had grown rigid and outdated, unable to accommodate the kind of advancements the trust wanted to achieve. Processes were fragmented, with data split across multiple systems. Reporting categories had expanded unchecked for 20 years, leading to inefficiencies and confusion.

Chesterfield Royal Hospital chose Ideagen Healthcare Guardian for its flexibility and the range of modules it offered. The platform allowed the team to centralize processes, reduce reliance on disparate systems, and tailor configurations to meet their specific needs.

“One of the benefits of using Ideagen Healthcare Guardian was that it gave us more modules than we had with our previous provider,” - Robert Conyers, Patient Safety Team

The focus was on simplifying processes and ensuring accessibility. The flexibility of Ideagen Healthcare Guardian enabled the hospital to introduce meaningful innovations. Customizable dashboards became a standout feature, helping teams and leadership alike access real-time insights into patient safety, risk, and governance metrics.

“The key thing to us is that the system interface is customizable to our needs. You can really adapt it based on what your organization needs, and we’ve found that as we’ve gone along.” – Kate Beardsley, Patient Safety Team

Other innovations included addressing previous inefficiencies in reporting workflows.

“What we had with our old systems were processes that required double the clicks to get things done, with Ideagen Healthcare Guardian, we’ve started improving initial usability it’s a lot less clicks, saving time while reviewing incidents.” - Robert Conyers, Patient Safety Team

The improved investigation documentation process further highlighted the platform’s value.

“We’ve found the quality of investigation documentation is so much better now.” – Kate Beardsley, Patient Safety Team

The benefits achieved through Ideagen Healthcare Guardian have been profound, with tangible improvements already evident in the hospital’s operations. Reporting culture saw a marked improvement immediately after implementation.

“We had a look at the data compared to the same time frame last year and saw the number of incidents has increased, we believe it’s down to the system being easier to use, not patient safety is isues.” – Kate Beardsley, Patient Safety Team

This is a common find in new Ideagen Healthcare Guardian adopters – with the system itself being intuitive and easier to use than other systems, many organizations find themselves having an increase in incident reporting. Beforehand, some incidents may not have been reported correctly or at all meaning insights couldn’t be gathered properly and improvements couldn’t be made from them.

The team also praised Ideagen Healthcare Guardian’s flexibility and scalability.

“It’s customizable to our evolving needs, we’ve used it to adapt processes and workflows as we learn, ensuring it remains effective.” – Kate Beardsley, Patient Safety Team

Usability enhancements made an immediate impact, particularly in reducing administrative burdens.

“Clicks and processes that were unnecessarily complicated before have become much simpler - every day we find something new that improves how we process data.” - Robert Conyers, Patient Safety Team

The centralization of data opened new possibilities for oversight and decision-making. This unification will ensure greater accuracy and efficiency in monthly reporting.

“The dashboards will soon allow people to see data from both the legacy system and Ideagen Healthcare Guardian on a single screen,” – Kate Beardsley, Patient Safety Team

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The trust has ambitious plans for Ideagen Healthcare Guardian moving forward. The full development of dashboards tailored to monthly and divisional reporting is a top priority. There’s also a focus on leveraging AI to identify emerging patient safety challenges, further reducing reliance on time-intensive manual data analysis.

Chesterfield intends to expand shared learning efforts through the use of thematic reviews and data-driven insights. Historical legacy data will continue to be optimized to provide seamless and accurate reports, blending past and present performance metrics into actionable intelligence.

Chesterfield Royal Hospital’s transition to Ideagen Healthcare Guardian underscores the power of modern, customizable tools to reshape governance and patient safety processes. With improvements in accessibility, reporting culture, and operational efficiency already evident, the trust is well-positioned for sustainable success.

Both Robert and Kate emphasized the importance of preparation and training but celebrated the potential already being unlocked.

For healthcare organizations seeking to modernize governance systems and improve patient safety, Ideagen Healthcare Guardian offers a flexible and robust solution designed to meet your needs. Contact us today to learn how you can begin your transformation journey.