Leicester trust gets blood gas results at POC with new system implementation

University of Leicester Hospitals NHS Trust has implemented a new data management system in its emergency department that has allowed a new function to be added to its electronic patient record.

The trust is using Radiometer’s Aqure Enterprise point-of-care (POC) data management system for its £48 million emergency department, which it opened in April 2017. This has been configured so that blood gas test results from patients are automatically linked to University of Leicester Hospitals’ Sunquest ICE electronic patient record (EPR).

Blood gas tests are ordered via the EPR and processed within the emergency department on Radiometer’s blood gas analysers, with results being delivered to the clinicians via the EPR.

According to Radiometer, the process implemented in University of Leicester Hospital’s Leicester’s emergency departmental is “the first of its kind” in the UK, with blood gas test booking first being flagged in the EPR, before the results are linked back to the patient record through a barcode.

The connectivity between Radiometer’s Aqure Enterprise system and the ICE EPR provides clinicians with an entire overview of the patient journey beginning when they are admitted into the emergency department. The data management system incorporates features designed to improve patient safety, including unique barcode identifiers.

Aqure Enterprise also as a fall-back connectivity protocol in place so that, in the event that the trust’s IT systems go down, emergency department can still process blood tests.

Jasminder Dhillon, POC team manager at University of Leicester Hospitals NHS trust, said: “The AQURE Enterprise system is a lot quicker and a lot safer than what we had before. It’s all about having the right information at the right time for the right sample and the right patient.”

Last year, NHS Improvement rejected Leicester’s bid for a £26.3 million integrated EPR plan, due to a lack of available funding.