News
Adastra launches mobile working system for community nurses
12 May 2009
Adastra Software Ltd has launched a mobile nursing solution, iNurse,
that will enable community nursing to be free of manual processes.
NHS Derby City piloted the system and found that
they could free up nursing hours significantly by reducing the manual
paper systems that had become a way of life for their
community nursing teams. Accurate management
information available via iNurse, will also enable NHS Derby City
to improve performance management of their services.
With iNurse each District Nurse is given a hand held device — at Derby
it was the Motorola MC35 — but other devices are available with this
software. The nurses at Derby can use the device as a phone as
well as a means of receiving their allocated patient visits. A Sister
can then manage the team workload, including new referrals into the
service, and delegate the visits to the individual nurses via iNurse on
a
computer workstation.
The nurses can then confirm receipt of their
visits electronically, visit the patients
and record the outcome of each visit on their device. The data captured
remotely is then sent from the iNurse device to the central iNurse database that holds all information
about episodes of patient care.
Once transmitted no data is left on the hand held device ensuring data
security and patient
confidentiality.
Phil Bacon, Assistant Director, Provider Services at NHS Derby City
said, “Initial calculations indicate we could free up over 15,000 hours
of district nursing time per year when iNurse is rolled out across the
whole service.
“We have worked with Adastra on this pilot in a
very collaborative way. They listened to our needs from a patient and
nursing point of view and to our management requirements.
"The iNurse
pilot
is the first step in a complex journey of change. Management information
is key to enabling NHS Derby City Provider Services to compete
effectively with other organisations and this pilot has shown that the
level of management information iNurse can provide is very
comprehensive.”
Jim Chase, Managing Director for Adastra commented, “We are proud to
launch iNurse to the market and excited to see it is already
delivering significant benefits for patient care, nursing efficiencies
and
community nursing management.
"The District Nursing Teams have been
heavily involved in shaping the iNurse functionality during the NHS
Derby City pilot. The nurses have been using it daily in real-life
situations and they have also had a voice at regular review meetings
with NHS Derby City Provider Services management and Adastra’s product
specialists. Their involvement and enthusiasm has led to a very usable
mobile nursing solution providing real benefits.”
Michelle Dixon, District Nursing Sister at NHS Derby City said,
“Before iNurse the team spent a lot of time travelling back and forth to
the office for information and we were constantly interrupted with
telephone calls from our Liaison team. iNurse has improved efficiency
greatly for us in both of these areas. Communication is massively improved across the service too. We now
record everything electronically so everyone has a full picture.”
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