County Durham & Darlington NHS Foundation Trust is bringing information technology to the patient bedside using iPod and iPad technology to record and escalate patient observations.

County Durham & Darlington NHS Foundation Trust is bringing information technology to the patient bedside using iPod and iPad technology to record and escalate patient observations.

County Durham & Darlington NHS Foundation Trust (CDDFT) agreed a partnership with Nervecentre Software to deliver an innovative and bespoke electronic observations system for nurses and doctors to record and monitor patient observations via the mobile devices. The software and devices are currently being piloted on several wards with full roll-out to all wards completed by this Winter.

Key intellectual functionality of the software includes calculating Early Warning Scores which will intuitively alert individual clinical staff that urgent attention is required and cascade results to the specified care team. This Nervecentre escalation software will make sure that all clinical staff at CDDFT have access to essential patient information at any point within the hospital, improving the ability to prioritise care outside the confines of a ward based environment.

Joint funded by CDDFT and the Safer Wards, Safer Hospital initiative, the new system also includes a sophisticated handover application used by both doctors and nurses which ensures there is a smooth transition from recording of information for handover, to continuous care.

In addition, specialist Nervecentre functions such as Hospital-at-Night, will allow escalations and job lists to be transferred via the system out of hours – ensuring patient care remains consistent 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Lead Nurse Special Projects Team, Paul Latimer, County Durham & Darlington NHS Trust, said “Pilot projects are now running on both respiratory and orthopaedic wards across two acute hospitals to trial the system and allow staff to familiarise themselves with the system, prior to going-live across 3 acute hospital and 5 community hospitals, incorporating Paediatrics and Maternity Services by the Winter 2015. As well as contributing to the goal of a paperless NHS, the e-Observations project is a Trust-wide strategy to improve the quality and safety of care and ensure that the right patients are seen by the right clinician and the right time, 24/7.

”Paul Volkaerts, Managing Director, Nervecentre Software, explains “Our successful partnership with CDDFT has a long-term whole hospital platform approach to ensure continuous staffing efficiencies, optimum visibility of vital patient information and real time monitoring and response to deteriorating patients between the necessary doctor and nurses with the ultimate impact being improved patient safety.

We are also working with the trust to provide a ‘bed management solution’ which integrates with our task management system and will provide ‘real time’ data to allow efficiencies in bed management. Overall, this whole hospital approach will revolutionise work flows at CDDFT significantly helping clinicians to improve patient care and patient flow.”