Early warning system to be deployed across NHS Lanarkshire

An early warning system that helps identify when patients are at risk of deterioration is to be deployed across Lanarkshire.

Patientrack, which has previously helped staff at NHS Fife, is to be deployed across the entirety of NHS Lanarkshire in a new five-year contract with Alcidion.

The deployment follows a trial of the Patientrack electronic observations and alerting system at University Hospital Monklands. The system was deployed into the hospital’s Operational Command Centre, where large-scale screens show staff the status of each patient throughout the hospital.

The new agreement will see Patientrack expanded to the 12,000 staff working in NHS Lanarkshire’s communities, health centres, clinics and at three district general hospitals – University Hospital Hairmyres, University Hospital Monklands and University Hospital Wishaw.

Donald Wilson, NHS Lanarkshire’s director of information and digital technology, said: “This implementation of Patientrack will expand on what we have learned from the Monklands digital hospital initiative and its links to the command centre we have established at the current site.”

In NHS Lanarkshire’s three acute hospitals, Patientrack will allow nurses to digitally capture patient vital signs at the bedside before it automatically calculates a patient’s early warning score and alerts clinicians to attend when needed.

In the community, the system will be configured to the specific needs of a range of relevant services, for example, mental health.

Lynette Ousby, UK general manager for Alcidion, added: “The project at NHS Lanarkshire is a direct response to an active clinical demand for a technology that is genuinely useful for hard working NHS professionals. The expansion of Patientrack across NHS Lanarkshire is demonstrable of an appetite in Scotland to use health tech to deliver the best and safest care possible for patients.

“We are committed to making this a huge success in Lanarkshire, and to supporting the ‘once for Scotland’ mission to accelerate digital technologies across the country when they have proven they can deliver.”