Sherwood Forest Hospitals joins forces with Nervecentre to further develop innovative EPMA solution to enhance patient safety.

Last year Sherwood Forest Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (SFH) bid successfully for national funding to support bringing the patient safety benefits of Electronic Prescribing and Medicines Administration (EPMA) to the organisation. To achieve this, SFH have launched a collaboration with Nervecentre to deploy and enhance Nervecentre’s new EPMA solution onto their core system specifically developed and moulded for the NHS Trust – all part of their innovative digital strategy.

The mobile based, closed loop capable system is being developed by clinicians to enable current paper-based prescription ‘drug charts’ to be used digitally by Doctors, Nurses and other Health Care Professionals who administer drugs alongside Pharmacy colleagues.

Having already worked with Nervecentre and successfully deployed a wide range of Nervecentre technology including Electronic Observations, Patient Flow, and Hospital at Night; key benefits to Sherwood Forest Hospitals integration of the EPMA solution are being able to use the existing Nervecentre architecture with clinical staff already having strong knowledge and functional usability of the main system bringing relevant clinical information into one place.

For SFH colleagues, it will support  an up to date and locally defined medicines formulary, significant improvements to processes that impact on patient flow, digital entry and management of prescriptions, electronic communication between wards/departments and pharmacy, removal of paper prescription charts and enhanced communication with GPs and wider primary care.

David Selwyn, Medical Director at SFH said: “Our clinical colleagues told us that the number one clinical priority for them was moving towards an electronic prescribing system; EPMA. Therefore, this contract award to Nervecentre is fantastic news as it supports our drive to improve patients’ safety within our organisation. At the same time, an EPMA will help all our clinical staff in their day to day work and is a key component of achieving our vision of healthier communities and outstanding care for our patients and local community.”

Morgan Thanigasalam, Clinical Lead for Digital Innovation and Transformation said: “This excellent news is the result of a huge amount of work by medical, nursing, pharmacy, Allied Health Professional, NHIS, finance and procurement colleagues – my personal thanks to them all, especially as it is not always clear how much effort goes into getting to this point. Especially pleasing is the fact that Nervecentre want to work with us in developing their product both in terms of EPMA and how it links with what we already use – leading to further improvements in patient safety and care as well as supporting the experience of clinicians.”

Mark Roberts, Respiratory Consultant at SFH said: “Electronic prescribing and medicines administration has the potential to hugely improve patient safety through reductions in prescribing and administration errors.  Ultimately, we hope it will lead to improvements in efficiency.  I’m excited that we’re now able to start the process of introducing the new system at Sherwood Forest Hospitals, and look forward to working with colleagues to achieve this in the coming months.  I would like to thank all our colleagues involved in the contract award for their hard work over the last couple of years.”