Telecoms firm’s tech supporting NHS wins national award

Communications and telecoms specialist EVAD has received national recognition for the way its technology supported the NHS during the pandemic.

The Derby firm was awarded the General Practice Telecoms of the Year title at the General Practice Awards, which celebrate the best within the healthcare industry.

EVAD was recognised for its Think Healthcare integrated telecoms service, which has made access to healthcare simpler for patients by freeing up time and capacity at busy GP surgeries across the country.

In the last year, thousands more patients have been able to access healthcare, with the system reducing call waiting on average by 22%.

The technology has now become best practise within many NHS trusts, saving an average of 200 administrative hours a year for staff.

Matt Hill, chief executive at EVAD, is now working to ensure the technology can be rolled out across other UK healthcare settings.

He said: “Think Healthcare was created after seeing how overwhelmed doctors’ surgeries could get with calls and seeing a need to find better ways of working.

“During the pandemic, an already extremely stretched service became even more busy and a major increase in calls to surgeries meant that phonelines were struggling to cope with demand, as well as difficulties with access to services due to lockdowns and a need for more flexible working.

“It was all making access to vital services more challenging.

“We created a system that helps to prioritise calls, simplify the patient journey and free up time for staff to be able to take care of other duties all while offering the flexibility to work across multiple sites.

“Think Healthcare has revolutionised how we look at healthcare with demand for the service growing.”

EVAD started out by supporting one local surgery perfecting a system that made sure phone lines were always accessible and creating extra capacity.

Since then, demand has grown with the unified telecoms specialists now looking after over 200 surgeries across the UK and set to roll out the technology to further NHS Trusts this year.

Matt said: “It is great our success in helping the NHS has been recognised and we look forward to our next chapter as we make the service available to more healthcare settings this year.”