Time pressure, cost cutting and reams of paperwork - the daily routine for health and social care workers often equates to tilting at windmills. Diakonie- Pflege Verbund Berlin - which provides social care services in Germany's capital - turned to technology to address these pressures more effectively and improve both quality of care and staff working conditions. Together with Allpen, a Hamburg-based systems integrator, Diakonie-Pflege Verbund Berlin rolled out Anoto's Digital Pen and Paper (DP&P) technology to automate a large share of documentation that social carers have to create during their working day.
Using the pens, staff can capture patient information digitally in an instant, eliminating the need to re-enter their handwritten notes electronically. As doctors and other care staff can work with up-to-date information, treatment can be deployed to patients more quickly for improved care quality.
Following a successful pilot with 40 staff at a care station in the east of Berlin, two further stations are currently being equipped with digital pens, which will see a total of 300 Diakonie employees working with the technology.
For Karl-Martin Seeberg, Diakonie's general manager, the use of Digital Pen and Paper plays an important role in continuously improving the quality of the organisation's services: "Caring for people also means spending time with them. With the Anoto DP&P technology, our care staff can concentrate on looking after our patients rather than being tied down with bureaucracy."
How it works
With a tiny infrared camera near its tip, the digital pen records carers' notes in real time as they fill in care forms and deployment transcripts. The digital pen writes just like a ballpoint pen, with the camera tracking the movements of the pen relative to a pattern of grey dots printed on the form.
The data can then be transferred from the pen to a PC via a USB docking station, and is immediately available for further processing. Copies of Diakonie Berlin's care forms and deployment transcripts can be printed along with the dot pattern using a normal laser printer.
The results
The key benefit noted by Diakonie Berlin's care staff was the time savings they were able to realise with the help of the DP&P technology.
Previously, carers had to manually fill in care forms and deployment records after each home visit, and then enter the data into the patient management system when they returned to the office.
With the digital pens, information is collected at the bedside and stored in the pen's memory. Back at the care station, it is docked and the data is transmitted automatically to the patient management system. Digital versions of the forms can be viewed as PDFs and made instantly accessible for review and auditing by the respective health insurance providers.
Besides archiving and presenting the forms, the new system has a range of additional functionalities supporting user administration, assigning pens to staff and managing the processing of care data and the deployment of services.
About Diakonie-Pflege Verbund Berlin
Diakonie-Pflege Verbund Berlin runs eight community care centres across the city of Berlin. It is part of the Diakonisches Werk, a national charity set up and managed by the Evangelical Church in Germany. Nationwide, the Diakonisches Werk employs 435,000 regular staff and 400,000 volunteers who work across more than 30,000 social services and self-help organisations.
About Allpen
Allpen Gesellschaft für Systementwicklung mbH, based in Hamburg, Germany, specialises in developing customised document and information management systems based on Anoto's Digital Pen and Paper. www.allpen.de
About Anoto Group AB
Anoto Group is the company behind and world leading in the unique technology for digital pen and paper, which enables fast and reliable transmission of handwritten text into a digital format. Anoto operates through a global partner network that focuses on user-friendly forms solutions for efficient capture, transmission and storage of data within different business segments, e.g. healthcare, bank and finance, transport and logistics and education. The Anoto Group has around 110 employees, offices in Lund (head office), Boston and Tokyo. The Anoto share is traded on the Small Cap list of the OMX Nordic Exchange in Stockholm under the ticker ANOT. For more information: www.anoto.com.