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Following a successful bid for funding from the Nursing Technology Fund, East London NHS Foundation Trust (ELFT) is equipping 30 members of its Children’s Services Team with iNurse, a mobile patient management system from Advanced Health & Care (Advanced).
30 iNurse-enabled tablets are being rolled out in May 2014 and the anticipated savings will enable the Children’s Services Team to meet stringent NHS efficiency targets as well as optimise service delivery. The implementation follows the successful roll-out of iNurse to 100 members of ELFT’s Community Nursing Team in December 2013.
ELFT was allocated funding after submitting a proposal to illustrate the benefits of deploying iNurse, in terms of improving care and raising staff satisfaction levels. The key benefits include real-time record keeping, improved staff access to patient records and reduced travel time.
The additional handsets will be used by specialist children’s community nurses and those in the sickle-cell and thalassaemia team, the HIV team and ELFT’s immunisation nurses who primarily work within schools in the borough of Newham. The solution will streamline processes and reduce administration by enabling front-line staff to access, update and communicate patient records at point of care using tablet technology.
Ian McKay, Head of Children’s Services for ELFT’s Newham service comments: “We are deploying iNurse to teams where reducing the administrative workload will very quickly make a positive difference. An example is when providing immunisation to multiple pupils during a single school visit - a particularly labour intensive task.”
In addition to providing vaccinations, the immunisation team is required to access and update the records for every child treated. By investing in iNurse the team can access and upload records in the field without having to return to base to update records manually, reducing the time and expense involved in travelling.
“iNurse will enable the team to access the school lists we are provided with ahead of visits and download medical records for every pupil. Once a child has been vaccinated, iNurse is used to record this information in the patient record which is then forwarded to be held centrally in our Electronic Care Record system. The efficiency of the system will substantially reduce time spent on manual administration which means our nursing teams can spend more time in the community with patients”, says McKay.
The deployment of iNurse to ELFT’s Children’s Services Team complements its successful migration to paperless record keeping in 2012. Since then, all patients’ records including archived documents have been scanned and stored electronically. Advanced (advancedcomputersoftware.com) has tailored iNurse to meet ELFT’s needs, customising electronic document templates to comply with NHS requirements for recording information about different types of treatment provided to children.
“From the initial exploratory meetings held to discuss our nursing teams’ requirements, through to delivering what we required, the support has been tremendous. As a result, we are confident that the roll-out of the new devices will be a complete success. Our nursing teams are looking forward to using the devices and are already talking about the potential benefits to their patients.” says McKay
The £100m Nursing Technology Fund, which was launched in December 2013, is being spent on mobile and digital technology to allow nursing, midwifery and care staff to work more flexibly and effectively. So far, 85 projects have benefited from £30m of funding for financial year 2013/14.
“The funding we received from the Nursing Technology Fund has been central to financing the purchase of additional iNurse handsets. We look forward to demonstrating the benefits and return on investment we have achieved as a direct result of the funding”, concludes McKay.
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