4 June 2009
North and North East Lincolnshire Pushing Forward
with Mobile Working Project
TPP has previously reported on the mobile working project in North Lincolnshire PCT and North East Lincolnshire CTP. The project's aim is to provide the infrastructure to allow 800 healthcare professionals across Lincolnshire to access SystmOne remotely using Toughbook laptops.
The project is going well as John Mitchell, Project Manager, explains, "We currently have around 200 staff using SystmOne remotely, with a further 200 coming on in the next three months. One of the obstacles we've overcome recently is to do with getting mobile network coverage in the really remote and rural areas of Lincolnshire. We were really struggling with Vodafone and so moved to 3 instead. We can now get downloads of 200-500Kb in areas where previously we couldn't get a signal at all. That's brilliant for SystmOne and it highlights the importance of having the right SIM provider for your area."
John continues, "We've received positive feedback from staff using SystmOne remotely. A number have commented that having live access to the patient record in a patient's home has prevented serious incidents, such as stopping them prescribing a drug the patient is allergic to. Previously, the nurse would take a printed record and have to scrutinise it manually - the automatic SystmOne alerts stop them needing to do that."
"For the next stage of the rollout, we aim to collect more feedback from staff," says John. "Before the rollout begins we are conducting a detailed baseline exercise, finding out things like how many patients staff see, how many unexpected visits they do, and how many times a patient record is not available for a visit. This will mean that a comprehensive benefits evaluation and comparison can be carried out later on."
The project is going so well that it was nominated for a prestigious award. The 'Northern Lincolnshire Mobile Working Project' was one of four projects shortlisted for the 'Best Innovation in Medical Communication' award at this year's British Medical Journal Group Awards. The BMJ acknowledged that the project supports community nurses by giving them fast and secure access to clinical records, email and support systems when visiting patients in the community, and that it demonstrated a broad range of benefits around improved patient care, productivity gains and cost reductions.
TPP would like to congratulate all involved in both the Toughbook project and the award nomination!
