Streamlining General Surgery with Cellma: From Admin Relief to Better Outcomes

General surgery is one of the most active specialties in the NHS with over 1.8 million inpatient episodes and over 1.35 million procedures annually according to GIRFT – General Surgery. As of April 2025, only 59.7% of patients in England began consultant-led treatment within the NHS’s 18-week referral-to-treatment target, far below the 92% standard. By January 2025, there were still 198,868 patients waiting more than 52 weeks for treatment, and nearly 14,975 patients waiting over 65 weeks, though this did mark an improvement compared to 2024, with a 38% reduction in year-long waits and an 85% reduction in waits over 78 weeks.   
 
Despite the commitment of general surgery departments across the UK, they continue to face significant challenges: increasing patient numbers, reduced exposure to training, variance in trauma work, and the subsequent impact of COVID-19. These challenges have subsequently required, in some cases, increased hours spent on administrative work, which ultimately means practitioner time with patients is reduced. 
 
Cellma EHR represents a great solution for this. Cellma improves general surgery workflows, thus reducing administrative burden, helps in complying with NHS procedures, and helps with safer and effective patient care. 

NHS Standards and Integrations within Cellma 

Cellma is designed to align with NHS frameworks, digital standards, and datasets, ensuring general surgery workflows are both clinically robust and compliant. Some of the key integrations include: 

• GP Connect – Instant access to GP records for safer perioperative care. 

• Shared Care Records – continuity of care across acute, community, and primary settings. 

• Care Identity Service 2 (CIS2) – Secure authentication for NHS staff. 
  • Personal Demographics Service (PDS) – accurate patient identification at every step. 

• FHIR Interoperability – Seamless communication across hospital systems. 

• Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) – Including APC, Critical Care, Outpatient, and A&E datasets. 

• Diagnostic Imaging Dataset (DID) – Direct integration of radiology into the surgical record. 

• Surgical Devices and Implants Core Dataset – National reporting on device use. 

• Critical Care Minimum Dataset (CCMDS) – Structured postoperative and ICU data. 
  
  

With these integrations, Cellma does more than digitise notes, it ensures surgery teams remain fully aligned with NHS data requirements while streamlining general surgery pathways. 

Scenarios in General Surgery and Cellma’s Support 
 

By offering end-to-end digital pathways, Cellma ensures consistency in surgical documentation and patient care, a true example of streamlining general surgery. 

Key Features of Cellma for General Surgery Care Management 

Surgical teams can spend more time on admin than any patient-facing care. Cellma offers a solution to this obvious imbalance with a suite of specialty-specific modules:  
 

• Electronic Patient Record (EPR): Standard templates for clerking, operative notes, post-op reviews, and discharge summaries that auto-populate clinical details.  

• Patient Administration System (PAS): Full digital approach to referral management, live theatre scheduling, and bed management for elective and emergency pathways.  

• Imaging Integrations: Radiology results (DID-linked) flow directly into EPR – no more following up reports across systems.  

• Laboratory Management: Blood results automatically flagged for any abnormality and shown as trends for perioperative optimisation.  

• E-Pharmacy: Fully integrated e-prescribing for perioperative prescribing, antibiotic stewardship, and discharge medications.  

• Theatre module: Digital consents linked directly to theatre lists to ensure safe coordination without misplaced documents.  

• Document Management: Operation notes, consent forms, MDT outcomes, and checklists all securely stored and instantly recalled.  

• BI & Analytics: Automated reports that line up with NHS datasets (HES, CCMDS, DID) to ease burden of audit and preparation for governance meetings.  
  
  

Addressing the Challenges in General Surgery 

• Emergency workload & reduced training opportunity: Cellma reduces clerking duplication, and gives structured digital notes, so trainees spend more time in theatres. 

• Variability in the volume of trauma: Centralised trauma documentation means we will be able to record learning cases for educational logs. 
  
  

In this way, Cellma is streamlining general surgery, increasing the efficiency of workflow, patient safety, and patient care. 

Security of Cellma  

• GDPR compliant data processing 

• Role-based access controls to protect patient confidentiality 

• Audit trails of every entry 

• ISO 27001. Cyber Essentials Plus. NHS DSP Toolkit compliant. 

• Surgeons and administrators can trust that patient data is safe, even as it flows across different care settings. 
  
  

The demand on general surgery departments is ever rising, making it crucial to simplify general surgery workflows. By having integrations with NHS datasets, specialty specific modules, and a secure infrastructure, Cellma EHR alleviates some of the administrative pressures and supports the whole surgical pathway – referral, treatment, post-operative, and discharge. 

Want to find out how Cellma can support your surgical team? Get in touch to book a free demo today and discover how we’re simplifying general surgery for better results.