Hospitals across England, Scotland and New Zealand have been recognised for innovative work to save lives by judging panels across the world, after achieving a major impact on patient safety with Patientrack.
NHS Fife, which has significantly cut cardiac arrests and dramatically transformed clinical practice within just six months of using Patientrack, won the digital health award from Holyrood's 2016 Connect ICT awards in Scotland in June. In the same month another Patientrack project won the inaugural New Zealand Health Information Technology (NZHIT) Award for work with Canterbury District Health Board and Waitemata District Health Boards, which was presented at the country's Healthcare Congress.
The Patientrack early warning system is used in hospitals to prevent avoidable harm and alert doctors and nurses to patients at risk of deterioration, so that they can intervene early. In practice nurses digitally record vital signs, before the system automatically escalates patients at risk and directly calls doctors to attend when early warning scores trigger. Patientrack has been proven in NHS hospitals for years, where doctors and nurses have used the technology to prevent harm, reduce mortality and shorten lengths of stay in hospital. Patientrack is now being used by health boards in New Zealand to achieve similar high impact results.
Frontline staff and hospitals using Patientrack to deliver safer care, have been recognised at a raft of awards in 2016. A project at Western Sussex Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust to predict and prevent acute kidney injury was a finalist in the 2016 Patient Safety Awards, with the project representing an important step to tackling a devastating condition linked with 100,000 deaths each year across England.
Patientrack is also a double finalist in the prestigious EHI Awards. Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has become a finalist for the best use of IT to support clinical treatment and care, and NHS Fife has been recognised again for the best use of IT to promote patient safety.
Donald Kennedy, managing director at Patientrack, said: "We congratulate our customers on the success they are having with their commitment to technology-enabled patient care. Clinical care and patient safety can be significantly enhanced by the application of technology that helps doctors and nurses with essential tasks. This is being recognised across the world.
"Patientrack is helping the NHS and others deliver better, safer care, with proven results in reducing mortality and faster clinical attendance for patients most in need. It is heartening to see medical and nursing staff are using our software to drive quality and save lives."
The accolades come after Patientrack was recognised as one of the best eHealth solutions in Europe. It was the only UK company listed in the champions category finals of the 2016 EU eHealth Competition, a programme supported by the European Commission as a means to increase visibility of what it describes as "the best" of healthcare technologies from SMEs across the continent.
About Patientrack
Patientrack helps hospitals deliver safer care - which is also more cost-effective care - by ensuring observation and assessment protocols are carried out correctly and consistently, and by automatically calculating early warning scores and alerting clinicians when interventions are needed. Through early identification of deteriorating patients, and the promoting of necessary assessments, Patientrack helps hospitals meet national and local targets for improvements in patient safety, improving patient outcomes and supporting frontline staff, while at the same time cutting costs and reducing paper. Patientrack was developed in conjunction with health professionals and its effectiveness in delivering both patient safety and cost improvements has been proven in a peer-reviewed clinical journal.