Evaluation of a Single-Center Pilot Digital Inpatient Referral System: A Mixed-Methods Study

ERSHA demonstrated the feasibility and acceptability of a clinician-led, in-house digital referral platform developed without external IT support. The system was implemented in place of the traditional paper process, offering a secure and auditable digital workflow that clinicians perceived as more convenient, accessible, and transparent. Reported improvements were observational and based on user feedback rather than comparative metrics. Despite challenges such as single-server dependency and limited survey participation, the project illustrates the potential of locally driven innovation to support practical digitization within National Health Service hospitals. These findings should be viewed as exploratory and hypothesis-generating, with future iterations aiming to incorporate structured analytics, predictive features, and machine-learning-assisted triage to further enhance referral management and inpatient care.