LIFE-SAVER
Hospital’s £800k on medical app
Hospital bosses have spent £800,000 on a new app designed to reduce mistakes made in monitoring patients.
The technology is now being used at Maidstone Hospital and the Tunbridge Wells Hospital in Pembury on iPods, iPhones and iPads.
Called Nervecentre, the new app combines information on patients, including breathing rate, blood pressure, pain scores and heart rate, which are observed by doctors and nurses.
Previously medical staff entered the data onto paper charts, then added up scores given from observations to produce a patient risk score.
But it was found on occasions the calculations leading to a patient’s score could be wrong. Instead staff will enter the information into the app, which will produce the risk score. It is designed to minimise the risk of human error in making calculations.
If someone has a risk level of five or more, which defines someone as critically ill, senior nurses will be called to assist and provide additional care and monitoring.
The Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust has secured a grant of £670,000 from the Nursing Technology Fund for the new addition.
But £800,000 has come directly from hospital funds, which has covered the software and the devices used to operate the app.
That sum could have provided 38 new nurses based on a starting salary of £21,000 a year per nurse.
But hospital teams argue the scheme will provide long-term savings by reducing storage of paper records and cutting printing costs.
Project lead Steve Lobley said: “The system allows clinical staff to monitor patients easily.
“Our staff have provided extremely positive feedback about using the system and we are confident not only will it make our processes more efficient and reliable but that it will also help us to provide the best possible care at all times to our patients.”
Plans by the director of digital technology at NHS England, Beverley Bryant, will see all hospitals become paper-free by 2020 in the hope of streamlining care for patients.
So far Foster Clarke and Mercer wards at Maidstone Hospital are using the new app. Both wards help people recover after procedures and operations. The rollout of Nervecentre is expected to be complete by December.
The trust is also working on a project to digitise it’s archive of more than a million medical records stored at sites in Paddock Wood and Medway.