A new digital check-in system at Northwick Park Hospital is helping patients avoid queues at A&E while allowing staff to identify people who may need urgent attention sooner.
The ‘digital doorway’ allows patients arriving at the hospital’s Emergency Department to register using their own smartphones rather than waiting at the reception desk.
More than 6,700 patients have already used the system, with around two-thirds of people attending A&E now checking in digitally after just several weeks.
The Patient Check-In service asks patients a series of questions when they arrive, providing an initial clinical triage before they are seen by medical staff.
Hospital staff say this means potentially unwell or high-risk patients can be identified earlier in their visit.
How the digital check-in works at Northwick Park Hospital
Patients can scan a QR code on their phone when they arrive at A&E before completing registration and answering questions about their reason for attending and their symptoms.
The information is then entered electronically into the hospital’s systems.
Chris Nordstrom, an A&E consultant at Northwick Park who helped design Patient Check-In, said: “Patients traditionally queue at reception and provide front-of-desk staff with details about why they’ve come to A&E which is then manually entered into a PC. This whole process can often take an hour during peak times leaving patients frustrated and staff spending a huge amount of time on manual admin tasks.
“We saw an opportunity to redesign that process around the patient, using technology to remove unnecessary steps rather than simply digitising an existing administrative process.
“Patients can now scan a QR code using their own mobile phone as soon as they arrive. They are guided through a straightforward registration and initial triage process, with the information entered electronically into our hospital systems. This removes the need for many patients to queue at the reception desk and gives them a faster, smoother and more comfortable way to register.”
The system has also been introduced with patient safety in mind, as information about symptoms can be made available to clinical teams earlier.
Chris said: “One of the most important benefits is patient safety and, by capturing information about the patient’s reason for attending and their symptoms much earlier in their journey, we can make clinically relevant information available sooner helping our teams identify patients who may be more unwell or require earlier attention. In an emergency department, getting the right information to the right people sooner really matters.”
The technology was developed by Streamwave and is also intended to reduce the amount of time hospital staff spend manually entering patient information.
London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust, which runs Northwick Park Hospital, said the system has saved hundreds of hours of administrative work.
Ealing A&E set to get the system next
The trust now plans to introduce Patient Check-In at Ealing Hospital’s Emergency Department before the end of 2026.
The project forms part of wider NHS efforts to make greater use of technology and patient data to improve the flow of people through hospitals and help prioritise patients according to clinical need.
Chris added: “Successful digital transformation isn’t about introducing technology for technology’s sake. It is about identifying the things that frustrate patients and staff, redesigning those processes and using technology where it can genuinely make care safer, faster and more efficient.”
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Chris Mitchell is the founder and editor of Harrow Online, Harrow’s leading local news platform.
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