The Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust has been awarded £1 million from NHS England Nursing Technology Fund to buy electronic equipment which will support staff in the delivery of effective care.

Ipads and software from Nervecentre which has proven to be trustworthy, reliable and very simple to use will be used from spring 2016 and allow staff to update patient records with the tap of their finger.

Ian Hanmore, Senior Lead Nurse for IT said: “The securing of the Nurse Tech Funds has given the Trust the opportunity to deliver technology in to the hands of nurses to enable them to deliver more effective care at the patient bedside.

“The decision to go with electronic observations and escalation stemmed from a desire by senior nurses to better manage the patients at risk of deterioration.”

The electronically recorded information can be viewed by doctors and senior nurses on mobile devices and from any computer in the hospital; this allows them to provide life-saving advice on a patient’s state of health if they show signs of deteriorating prior to them attending the patient at the bedside.

Professor Nancy Fontaine, Deputy Chief Executive and Chief Nurse said: “Safety for patients and staff is our priority and using state of the art technology to further improve our great safety record is a real opportunity.

“The ability to record and escalate patient’s vital signs from the bedside will improve timeliness of assessment and treatment and ultimately supports positive outcomes for patients. With this innovation we can ‘Achieve Excellence in Safety Everyday’.”

The system has been planned to go live on two wards within the hospital by mid-March 2016, with a plan to implement the system to adult in-patient wards by the end of summer 2016.

This has been introduced to move the Trust to a paper light organisation in line with NHS England’s objective of achieving a paperless NHS by the year 2020.

Dr Rishi Prasad, the Trust’s Chief Clinical Information Officer said: “It will change the way we look after our patients and deliver care. Within seconds of identifying a deteriorating patient a clinician will be made aware that they need to see the patient.

“This is technology that will change the face of clinical care at Princess Alexandra Hospital forever.”