DIGI TAL HEALTH
journey, helping ensure seamless data and patient safety at all times.
When a patient is moved, the module simply unplugs from the side of the monitor and can be used as a transport monitor. It can then be ‘plugged’ into the host monitor at the bedside, in the new location, creating efficiencies. There are fewer patient leads to disconnect, reconnect or clean. However, the pandemic brought new challenges for hospitals in the UK. As the pandemic put pressure on ICUs, there was a requirement to quickly accelerate the integration of patient monitoring devices into hospital networks to enable hospitals to expand their ICU capacity into other areas. “At the height of the pandemic, there
weren’t enough beds in ICUs. The fact that patient monitors could be integrated into the network enabled higher acuity consultants and nurses to look after more acute patients remotely. Staff who normally worked on general wards were able to access the support of more experienced colleagues in ITU,” explains John Mendonca, Mindray UK’s national account manager for digital health solutions.
“Connectivity gives clinicians better access to patient data and offers better insights, so they do not need to be at the patient bedside to access vital information. With connected technology, this data can even be accessed from the other side of the world. The data can be accessed via mobile devices or apps that run on a laptop – anywhere within a facility,” he continues. “Informatics project leads are looking to optimise workflow by integrating medical devices, so they push patient data directly into the EPR. They want to work with vendors that make this process easier. In a high acuity area, you may have numerous devices at the point of care. Hospitals are now looking for vendors that can take away the pain of trying to integrate a plethora of devices and provide a single solution – with an optimum solution, clinicians should only have to look at a single interface, instead of multiple screens,” adds Mendonca. “Connectivity of devices allows Trusts to streamline the workflow and free time to care. Data transfer from the device into the
EPR is automated; it optimises the clinical workflow and makes the data immediately available to the clinical team.” Key to achieving interoperability between medical devices and third-party EPRs is Mindray’s M-Connect solution. The system can link devices and EPR systems across entire hospitals, or individual departments one-by-one, with a range of systems that support vendor-neutral integration with networks of any size or infrastructure type. By connecting the hospital’s entire bedside monitoring network to the clinical informatics systems, the system can provide uninterrupted visibility of patient data across the entire healthcare journey. It enables clinical teams to access detailed patient information anywhere, and facilitates the sharing of medical expertise between clinicians, departments, and hospital sites. Data can be sent to workstations, viewstations, tablets, PCs and mobiles for remote patient monitoring, ensuring timely alarms and faster responses to patient deterioration. Caregivers can sit at a nursing station and see all continuous vitals, ECG reports, Early Warning Scores (EWS), alerts and a host of other parameters for hundreds
Connectivity of devices allows Trusts to streamline the workflow and free time to care. Data transfer from the device into the electronic patient record is automated; it optimises the clinical workflow and makes the data
immediately available to the clinical team. John Mendonca, Mindray UK.
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of patients simultaneously. M-Connect also enables ultrasound to be viewed on the same screen as patient monitoring data – clinicians no longer need to view two different screens. Less time spent checking different monitoring screens allows quicker decision making and enables caregivers to spend more time interacting directly with their patients. In the future, platforms such as this could also offer new insights that could shape care delivery. “Connecting more data sets together with a system like M-Connect, opens up huge opportunities for future research and proactive healthcare, as well as immediate benefits to patients through greater visibility and holistic data. “Once more hospitals have these large data sets in place, they can integrate the data with AI tools like trend analysis to gain a deeper understanding into the relationships between monitoring parameters,” comments Stuart Critchley, IT & connectivity product specialist, Mindray UK.
He adds that, in order to maximise the speed of integration and ensure that all Trusts receive the benefit of a fully connected system, there will need to be some standardisation of cybersecurity regulations across the NHS. “There are standards and protocols being put in place but currently the rules around safety and integrity of patient data are different from Trust to Trust. As more hospitals introduce interoperability and EPR connectivity it will mean this issue becomes more urgent,” Critchley explains. Scalability and flexibility are also
important, Mendonca points out. With M-Connect, hospitals can start with just one department with the monitoring solution for a specific ward integrated into the EPR, then
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