SystmOne's National User Meeting 2007 provided a great opportunity for
computer company, Dell, to present the "compelling benefits" found during
a seven-month programme trialling SystmOne remote working for community practitioners.
The CRS (Care Record Service), part of the National Programme for IT (NPfIT),
can deliver significant benefit for users who are online in clinics and other
centres. However, unless those clinicians and therapists working primarily
in the community have mobile connectivity they are prevented from taking
full advantage of these benefits, being physically separated from essential
patient data when at the point of care.
Dell, in association with Intel®, trialled a remote working solution
comprising of SystmOne Community, Dell Notebook PCs with Vodafone mobile
network connectivity (GPRS, 3G and 3G Broadband), and N3 Remote Worker VPN.
The trial aimed to provide users with the ability to use SystmOne and other
standard applications "as though they were in the office" when they were
out and about. The comprehensive trial monitored almost 1,000 user days in
multiple clinical services (Community Matrons, Occupational Therapy, Physiotherapy,
Speech and Language Therapy) and in both rural and city centre locations.
Results of the trial were compelling - users estimated an improvement of
between 40% and 90% in the effectiveness of the tools available to help them
do their job; travel was reduced by 30%; making better use of time freed
up to an hour a day that was previously unproductive. Overall, productivity
increased by 25% and over 96% of patient notes were completed the same day.
Barbara Stuttle CBE, National Clinical Lead for Nursing, Connecting for Health
commented, "What has impressed me has been nurses and clinicians explaining
how much it improved the time they spend with patients, how much more in
control they were with the information all to hand and how they were able
to plan before they met the patient so that the interaction with the patient
was much more meaningful."
Dell reported that the trial improved the quality of care provided to patients
through enhanced clinical safety and speed and quality of response. Key factors
that contributed were the avoidance of data 'blindness', particularly in
unplanned visits, faster data processing, reduced stress and improved patient
interaction.
Feedback from the trial users in Nottingham has been very positive, with
verbatim comments such as "It changed my life in a week", "I'm less stressed and I have
the information I need to perform better" and even "I'm not giving it [the
trial system] back!"
TPP's Director Neil Toner says, "Mobile working through GPRS with SystmOne
is not a new concept, it is established and works well. We are pleased to
see the very positive results of the Dell trial and hope that remote working
will become available to more and more SystmOne users so that they may benefit
from access to full patient records and SystmOne functionality wherever they
happen to be."
