Hospital app tracks patients

An iPhone app to track patients in hospital is being rolled out across University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

The trust developed FindMyPatient in partnership with CGI and has been testing it in a pilot stage over the past three months ahead of roll-out to clinicians across the site.

It provides users with a list of patients and their locations in real-time to reduce the need for doctors to print information from hospital terminals or call a ward to find out where a patient has been moved to.

In addition to keeping track of the location of patients, the app also provides doctors with a basic medical record, including allergies, alerts, test results and imaging reports via their mobile device.

The information in the app is taken from CGI’s e-CareLogic clinical electronic records system, which is in use at UCLH.

According to CGI, feedback from doctors who used the app in the pilot suggested it could save them up to an hour a day on tracking patients.

Richard Cohen, colorectal consultant at UCLH told Digital Health News that the app “makes life easier”.

“It allows offsite visualisation of patient details and results without going through the laborious process of logging into a system onto a laptop or computer. It also tells you where patients are in the hospital, because they are often in beds all over the hospital. It’s proved extremely useful on both counts.”

He said the functionally of the app was simple, allowing him to enter his name so he can see where all his patients are, or to enter a specific patient and see where they are in the hospital.

“I don’t understand why it’s not been available in every hospital in the land for 20 years.”

Cohen added that he would like to see the introduction of the ability to view previous patient correspondence in the app, but that CGI was working on this.

The company has a working relationship with UCLH as its IT outsourcing provider, managing the trust’s IT infrastructure and services.

CGI is now looking to market the app to other trusts and healthcare organisations to keep track of patients.

A spokesperson said it was likely that organisations with e-CareLogic would be the target audience, although the app can work as a standalone tool.

Ed Percy, vice president, healthcare at GCI said: “In a critical-care environment, time is of the essence and saving valuable minutes to physically locate patients and their records can make a huge difference to patient outcomes.

“Hospitals that adopt the FindMyPatient app will be able to save time and improve efficiency, making more time available to treat patients.”

Read more about FindMyPatient here.