Ascom UK is deploying hundreds of its Myco smartphones to enable on-call doctors at the Royal Bolton Hospital to better care for seriously ill patients at night and over weekends.
Initially, 30 handheld Myco smart devices are being used by on-call doctors and night nurse practitioners to triage emergencies across the hospital’s medical, surgical, and orthopaedics wards – the first phase in a phased rollout of 303 Ascom smartphones, part of an electronic observations project to ‘deliver time-critical alerts’ to clinical teams across Bolton NHS Foundation Trust.
In the next few months, Myco devices will be deployed on paediatric, maternity, and critical care wards. The Ascom technology will be fully integrated with Patientrack, an electronic observations system that will send alerts and crucial clinical information to the Myco devices when patients show signs of deterioration. Different sounds and ‘traffic lights’ based on the severity of the case will enable doctors to acknowledge and triage cases.
The Trust’s chief clinical information officer, Dr Simon Irving, a consultant in acute medicine, said: “My ambition is that the Myco devices will completely replace bleeps, which are no longer suitable for a modern NHS. Unlike a bleep, the Myco enables clinicians to call each other, message securely, and interact with escalations from Patientrack. The devices will also have apps containing trust clinical guidelines and an evidence-based medicines portal, to ensure consistent, safe care.”
Dr Irving added: “The devices will save doctors, critical care nurses, and charge nurses a great deal of time that they currently spend trying to reach each other on the phone to assess cases. A full audit trail from the devices will also enable us to track peaks of activity and better utilise our workforce, as well as measuring performance.”
Dr Irving said one of the reasons the trust had chosen Ascom was because its technology integrates so well with other systems. He explained: “Ascom has been very open to working with other suppliers. This deployment is part of a unified communications system in Bolton including a shared care record with community staff, virtual desktops from Citrix, and an Allscripts EPR that is due to go live next spring.”
Paul Lawrence, MD for Ascom UK said: “We are proud to go live with this important project with Bolton, which is fast earning its status as one of the most technologically ‘joined up’ NHS Trusts in the UK. With every contract, we strive to make our technology integrate with that of other suppliers to ensure smooth, complete, and efficient workflows across healthcare.”