Blackpool goes mobile

Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has deployed a range of integration tools from NDL to enable mobile working.

The tools means that community staff that use in-house applications on mobile devices can view and update schedules and clinical notes directly into the trust’s patient administration system.

Blackpool recently merged with NHS Blackpool and NHS North Lancashire to achieve foundation trust status and is now operating on many disparate systems.

Darren Kirmond, the trust’s IM&T development manager, told EHI that because the mobile apps could integrate with other hospital systems, staff no longer had to return to the office to enter notes after a visit.

All district nurses now use Samsung Galaxy tablets to record patient visits.

They can download lists and data from the trust’s iSoft iPM community PAS and information entered is automatically fed back into the system without having to go back to base.

“We can achieve an hour a day in time-saving just by mobilising staff work flows,” said Kirmond.

The trust has created two apps for mobile devices in the community.

‘Access to Caseloads Everywhere’, is being trialled by ten of the health visitor staff that are a part of Blackpool’s Healthy Child Programme, a national preventative service for families with children under five.

“The app gives them a list of their case loads and they can also record activity from group sessions such as healthy baby clinics,” said Kirmond.

“Sitting alongside the app, the health visitor can complete their assessment forms on the device and it’s uploaded to an intermediate database and the contact is fed into the iPM.

“As we’re looking to move towards a full electronic patient record, that assessment data can be fed into any record. It’s live with ten health visitors at the moment, but we plan to roll it out to everyone this year.”

‘Care in Motion’, is being used by community nurses on patient visits.

“All the visit activity is future planned in the PAS, so there’s quite a rich data set in there. We can take this and download it into the mobile solution,” explained Kirmond.

Staff also have access to emails, calendars and NICE guidelines on the tablets.