One view of the patient journey.
Confidential regional hospital network
4 Min
The case study in 30 seconds
Nine systems, one patient and no single picture.
A regional hospital network managed appointments, referrals, bed availability and discharge in nine separate systems, each owned by a different department. Coordinators spent much of their day phoning colleagues to piece together where a patient was and what happened next.
Arenema built a thin layer that listens to key events in each system and assembles them into one live timeline per patient. None of the existing systems was replaced or modified in a way clinicians would notice.
Coordinators now see the whole journey in one place, and the network can see where patients wait.
The situation
The information existed. Nobody could see it together.
Each system did its own job well, but none of them knew about the others. A patient discharged on a ward could still appear as an open referral elsewhere.
- 01The same patient details were typed into several systems by hand.
- 02Coordinators had no way to tell whether a delay was in transport, a bed or a missing result.
- 03Departments measured waiting times differently, so figures could not be compared.
- 04Replacing the systems was a multi-year programme the network could not afford to wait for.
We did not need another system. We needed the ones we had to tell the same story.
Impact
What coordinators noticed first.
The change showed up in the daily routine before it showed up in any report.
- Fewer phone calls to find out where a patient was
- One shared timeline instead of nine partial ones
- Earlier warnings of delays at handover points
- A common definition of waiting time across departments
For the first time, the front desk and the wards were looking at the same patient on the same screen.
01. Integration
Listening to the systems rather than rewriting them
Arenema connected to each system through the events it already produced, such as an admission or a booked transfer, and translated them into a shared patient timeline.
Because the layer only reads, clinical systems kept running exactly as before and every connection could be added one department at a time.
02. Data quality
Agreeing what a patient, a visit and a wait actually mean
Matching records across nine systems meant first agreeing on identifiers and on common definitions. Clinical and administrative staff helped set them, so the numbers could be trusted by both.
Mismatches were surfaced to the owning team instead of being silently corrected.
Trust in the timeline came from showing people where the data disagreed.
03. Staff adoption
Starting with the people who make the calls
The first users were the coordinators who spent their day on the phone. Their feedback shaped what the timeline showed and in what order.
Wards and departments joined as the view proved useful to them, not because they were instructed to.
Evidence
Signs that the change took hold.
This engagement is evidenced by changes in how the network works day to day. The points below are illustrative placeholders for this sample.
- 01
A single patient timeline
Admissions, transfers, results and discharge now appear together for each patient, drawn from nine systems.
- 02
Shared definitions of waiting
Departments report waiting time the same way, so figures can be compared and acted on.
- 03
Delays visible at handover
Coordinators can see where a patient is held up and who can resolve it, before it becomes a complaint.
- 04
No system replaced
Existing clinical and administrative systems stayed in place and kept their owners.
Outcome
A calmer front desk and a clearer picture.
The network now has a live, shared view of the patient journey and a common language for talking about delay. Decisions that once took a round of phone calls can be made from one screen.
Because nothing was ripped out, the work could continue alongside daily care, and the same layer can take on further systems as the network chooses.
The aim was to give people the full picture they needed, not to ask them to learn another system.
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