New IT system for critical care patients

Staff caring for the most critically-ill patients at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital now have a computer system that improves the monitoring of critical patients.

The Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital's Critical Care Complex cares for more than 2,000 critically ill patients a year (up from 563 patients in 1999) and until recently all the information gathered from the hi-tech intensive care equipment was recorded on paper.

Under the previous system doctors and nurses used to write everything down on a large paper chart for every patient. The kind of information recorded included hourly data from digital monitors for heart rate, blood pressures, results of arterial blood gas analysis, hourly fluid inputs and outputs, clinical observations, temperature, neurological observations, drugs administered and nursing interventions.

Now the new Clinical Information Management System (CIMS), supplied by iMDsoft, records all that information in one system and links in with the other hospital systems in order to help give clinical staff a complete picture of the patients' condition.

The new computer system cost £332,000 and was delivered under budget and on schedule. Consultant anaesthetist Dr Mark Dixon said: “We are very pleased with the system, it's working well and making a big difference to the clinical team. The reason for introducing this new system is to improve the quality of care we offer our critically ill patients. Some of those qualitative benefits include reducing the risks associated with handwritten records which could present problems with legibility and accuracy and the e-prescribing part of the system will also help prevent medication errors.”