South Tyneside, the first health jurisdiction in the United Kingdom to join the HealthPathways Community, has recently hit another exciting milestone, achieving 100,000 page views just 18 months after launch, within a regional population of only 153,000.

Launched with 50 pathways in August 2016, the South Tyneside HealthPathways website had already passed the 100 pathways milestone by October 2017. Now supporting the local health and social care community with over 200 localised pages including 155 clinical pathways, the programme continues to go from strength to strength. Numbers of new users, page views and sessions continue to grow month to month.

Streamliners Regional Group Manager, Anja Hüskens says the strong commitment of the South Tyneside HealthPathways team was clear from the outset.

“Right from the very start of the project, South Tyneside HealthPathways team were very focused on making a big difference with HealthPathways,” she says.

“Implementing HealthPathways represented such a huge change to the local health system, ongoing determination to make it work at all levels has been a key driver to how quickly we have been able to bring about such rapid change. We had strong support for the project from South Tyneside’s senior leadership team through to the health practitioners who would be using the system,” she says.

Above: South Tyneside Clinical Editor reviews draft pathway content with a local subject matter expert.

Being able to link with a well-established GP education programme within the South Tyneside health jurisdiction has also been an important success factor, says Anja. With local GPs already committed to monthly afternoon training sessions, HealthPathways Hot Topics training sessions were able to be easily aligned to an existing GP forum that was already well supported.

“We are both excited and pleased to see how rapidly the utilisation has continued to grow since we first launched our site in 2016,” says Dr David Hambleton, South Tyneside CCG CEO.

“I think it’s a reflection of how well the South Tyneside clinicians and leaders have taken to the wider system integration work we’ve undertaken with our Canterbury colleagues, of which HealthPathways is a key enabler. Also, by linking HealthPathways to our existing GP education sessions we’ve been able to ensure that awareness levels and commitment to its continued development remains at the forefront of our clinicians’ minds.”

“I am delighted that we are now seeing a real difference for our GPs and their patients. Whilst it’s so far so good, I look forward to the continued development of the site, our wider system integration work and the continued growth in utilisation. With that in mind I look forward to reporting on our millionth page view soon!” 

With rapid growth set to continue, the pace of health system transformation in South Tyneside is a credit to all involved. It’s exciting to see the progress of our first UK region to join the HealthPathways Community and we look forward to welcoming more United Kingdom health jurisdictions onboard.

Learn About the South Tyneside Journey So Far

• Welcoming South Tyneside to the HealthPathways Community
• HealthPathways Set to Have an Impact in South Tyneside
• South Tyneside HealthPathways celebrates its first year