12 July 2005
PowerClinical is proud to announce a new Observations module to their wireless software Healthspring, which allows hospital clinicians to enter clinical observations (such as blood pressure, pulse and temperature) from the patient bedside during ward rounds.
The Healthspring software runs on handheld devices that communicate with the hospital computer systems over a wireless network. The compact handheld devices free up clinicians from desktop computers, allowing them point-of-care IT from anywhere in the hospital grounds, especially during ward rounds.
Clinicians traditionally write patient observations down on bits of paper during their ward rounds. This involves entering each record once on paper during the ward round, and again at the nursing station computer at the end of the ward round.
The traditional manual method goes against the natural flow of the process and is prone to fundamental faults such as transcription errors or the loss of the original paper record.
With Healthspring, each clinical observation record is simply entered once during the ward round while at the patient bedside, when the clinician is focussed on the patient. This streamlines the clincian's workflow, saves time and reduces recording errors.
Healthspring has other functions which collectively serve to increase clinician productivity such as view patient lists, view patient records, ordering tests, viewing test results, prescribing medications, as well as writing referrals and discharge letters.
PowerClinical director Dr Wilton Braund said, As a clinician myself, I am especially interested in putting IT directly into clinicians' hands to assist work flow and improve productivity.
Desktop computer technology does not suit the roving clinician, and has introduced certain artificial restraints in their work process. Clinical observations scribbled on bits of paper are often lost, and re-entering results is simply doubling up on the use of expensive clinical resource.
Healthspring allows clinicians to return to a more natural and streamlined workflow, which fits in with the clinical process.
