The Nervecentre solution provides clinicians with the ability to record and monitor patient observations via a mobile device. Its key functionality includes sophisticated cascading escalation, with deteriorating patients' vital signs being relayed to the most appropriate clinician in order for a "recognise and rescue" plan to be put in place. In addition, specialist functions such as Hospital-at-Night, will allow escalations out of hours - ensuring patient care remains consistent 24 hours a day and helping HEY to achieve standard 243 of the Francis Report - recording of routine observations.
Steve Jessop, the trust’s chief nurse information officer explains: "We needed smarter and more efficient ways across the organisation of detecting the sick, deteriorating patient, and providing a timely and effective response to this by clinical staff. This included the ability to target messaging to services and clinicians such as critical care outreach, junior doctors and the infection control team.
"This solution will enable us to have visibility of all deteriorating patients so that we can pro-actively intervene improving the care, management and outcomes of patients 24/7, including out of hours periods, and at weekends and bank holidays, when it can be particularly difficult to escalate manually."
Key to the trust's objectives was to improve their clinical governance processes and directly respond to the targets set by government, in particular the standards laid out by the Francis Report.
Dr Mark Simpson, emergency department consultant and trust CCIO said: "The trust was seeking a system to support patient safety and outcomes, which is an integral component of our IM&T strategy. The Nervecentre solution has everything we need and more! It will enable us to create an environment which will enhance the user experience by removing the reliance on paper records."
As well as the benefits from digitising the recording of observations, the solution will also allow HEY to remove the risk and inefficiency of paper based handover meetings by ensuring that all members of a clinical team are working from a common understanding of the status of a patient.
Simpson continued: "By giving our team the appropriate tools we will be able to drive down response times, reduce the potential for untoward incidents and ensure that incomplete tasks are appropriately escalated."
Clinical engagement is expected to be high as users can personalise the information they receive, have that information be delivered to a variety of mobile devices and access it anywhere easily and securely.
"After careful consideration of all the options available to us, Nervecentre offered both substantially more benefits as well as a more cost effective solution. The investment from the Nursing Technology Fund helped us to realise our vision much quicker than initially anticipated and we are looking forward to rolling this out across the trust” Simpson concluded.
Managing director of Nervecentre, Paul Volkaerts said: "The tender process, which began in March 2013, has allowed HEY to ensure they have made the best decision to meet their on-going vision to provide safe, high quality effective care by ensuring efficient economic use of resources - particularly staff.
"Nervecentre is looking forward to entering into a relationship which focuses so heavily on improving patient outcomes. This is central to our on-going strategy of improving patient safety and supports the work we are doing with other trusts across the UK."
In February 2014, Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust was awarded £950,000 from the Nurse Technology Fund to support the roll out of an Electronic Clinical Observation System (e-COBS).
About Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust
The trust was established in October 1999 following the merger of the Royal Hull Hospitals NHS Trust and East Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust.
They operate from two main hospital sites, namely Hull Royal Infirmary and Castle Hill Hospital in Cottingham, plus have a number of additional services based across other local estate and in the community.
Employing around 8,000 staff, they welcome around one million patients through their doors every year. They are an aspiring NHS Foundation Trust and a recognised Major Trauma Centre for the region.
About Nervecentre
Nervecentre is a healthcare focused consultancy and software development organisation founded in 2010 which is committed to enabling the NHS to improve productivity and quality through innovative, mobile collaboration technology.
Nervecentre addresses patient safety, clinical governance and resource management through a series of MobileTask Management, Handover and Observations applications.
Its solutions are platform independent and integrate into a hospital's existing IT and PAS systems.
Its handset independent applications function with multiple mobile devices.
A comparable example of the use of Nervecentre for the management of Out-of-Hours working is referenced in the QIPP collection on NICE Evidence. This shows how NHS staff are saving money without compromising on quality. QIPP reference 12/0017 published by Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust.