Nottingham trust deploys Nervecentre strategic mobile information solution
Nervecentre Mobile Healthcare solution enables trust to optimally manage clinical resources
Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust (NUH) has moved a step closer to becoming a paperless hospital by selecting Nervecentre as its strategic mobile information and communications solution, facilitating improved hospital processes through access to accurate and timely information on mobile devices.
NUH implemented Nervecentre as its Hospital at Night solution 24 months ago in both the City Hospital and Queens Medical Centre, and independent studies have shown numerous benefits including a 70% reduction in clinical incidents and significant reduction in length of stay.
Following the success of this deployment, NUH has also employed Nervecentre’s mobile communications technology to improve a number of other hospitals processes, leading to the decision to purchase an Enterprise Task Management License in late 2012. These services include:
- Specialist referrals – referrals that traditionally used the bleep system now use Nervecentre, reducing delays, improving accuracy of information, removing unnecessary interruptions for senior doctors and improving governance through a full audit trail
- Nurse call – when a patient requests help via the nurse call system, an automatic notification is sent to mobile devices carried by appropriate nurses, delivering a quicker response to patient needs, especially in single room environments where visibility of patients is restricted
- Portering – the patient escort team at NUH have used Nervecentre for 18 months, improving team efficiency, reducing waiting time for wards, and providing comprehensive reporting on service performance
Andrew Fearn, director of ICT services and senior information risk owner, said: “We recognised that improving clinical communication across the whole hospital required a single, flexible platform to avoid the cost and integration complexity of multiple systems.
“What is innovative about Nervecentre, and makes it ideal as an enterprise tool, is that the same platform can be used for multiple different processes across the trust, reducing cost of ownership, training requirements, and improving information flow between all areas.
“Having one system configurable to address multiple mobile processes makes for a very sensible purchase that maximises our investment in the technology and fits very much into the QIPP agenda.”
Nervecentre allows us to migrate services off the bleep platform onto smart phones, providing governance, live clinical information, reducing internal delays, and allowing us to manage our clinical resources optimally
He added: “All NHS trusts recognise that the bleep system no longer meets the clinical demands for real-time, governed communication and information. Nervecentre allows us to migrate services off the bleep platform onto smart phones, providing governance, live clinical information, reducing internal delays, and allowing us to manage our clinical resources optimally.”
Nervecentre provides an enterprise class platform that integrates tightly into hospital systems providing a single, integrated mobile solution that can be used to improve hospital processes and governance across a broad range of hospital services. Its Task Management capability automates the allocation of clinical tasks to doctors or specialist staff via mobile devices, providing a simple way for nurses and junior doctors to request support from other teams, while improving visibility, accountability and auditability around the request. This improved information allows clinical staff to make informed decisions and provides hospital management with visibility of activities to manage the complex environments with confidence. This improves patient safety by reducing delays and preventing avoidable deterioration.
Paul Volkaerts, managing director of Nervecentre, believes the broad benefits that electronic task management delivers will drive widespread adoption across acute hospitals.
“One of the recommendations of the recent Francis Report is that supervisors should be automatically alerted when actions which might be expected have not occurred. This can only be achieved with Electronic Task Management. The patient safety benefits that the technology enables will drive this to become a whole-hospital technology”.
- Companies:
- Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust
- Nervecentre Software
- Queens Medical Centre
