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Vital Signs Technology Saves Nurses Thousands of Hours at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust

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Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust links vital signs monitors directly with electronic patient record to help improve nurses’ working lives

London,  14th November 2017 –Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust reports saving some 5,800 hours of nursing time since the introduction of vital signs monitoring devices from Welch Allyn, a subsidiary of global medical technology company Hill-Rom (NYSE: HRC).

Nursing staff are using the Welch Allyn® Connex® monitoring devices across hundreds of beds to capture important clinical observations for patients in their care. The new devices are designed to help eliminate the need for nurses to manually enter patient data, with the devices capturing physiological measurements at the bedside and automatically transferring crucial information directly to the Trust’s electronic patient record system.

Sets of clinical parameters captured are then used to generate a National Early Warning Score (NEWS) that tells hospital staff when a patient is at risk of deterioration. Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust reports that by using the new system, staff are saving time and are now alerted more quickly to patients requiring immediate intervention.

Named as a Global Digital Exemplar by NHS England in March 2017, the Trust has so far deployed the Welch Allyn® Connex® monitoring technology in 25 percent of its wards, with intentions to deploy the vital signs monitoring devices more widely, following early high-impact results around time savings.

Gerry Bolger, Chief Nursing Information Officer and clinical lead for nursing informatics at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, said: “This is a very exciting development for our hospitals. We have seen significant time-releasing benefits so far, and the next step is to roll out more of the connected bedside monitoring devices throughout our hospitals over the coming months. We also want to look at how the recorded observations, which are able to provide more accurate readings, will be able to assist doctors and nurses towards the early identification and treatment of patients at risk of sepsis.”

The new automated process can reduce the time required to take parameters by up to 50 percent with over one minute saved each time a set of observations is taken. This can quickly convert to significant time savings, and the Trust estimates that 5,800 hours of time have been released to direct care since the monitors were first introduced in January 2016.

Nefer Mercado, healthcare assistant at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, said: “We were one of the first wards to get the new bedside systems. The new systems have made things a lot easier for our ward when monitoring patients. Now there’s no need to manually add in the observations, the full recordings are logged and with the patient’s record within a minute. It saves me so much time. I now have extra time to spend assisting patients and supporting the nurses on the ward.”

Katie Pritchard, ward manager at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, added: “It has had a real impact on handovers. We can see our patients up on the screen, and staff can much more easily examine NEWS scores. This means there is no miscommunication; it is quickly clear when patients need interventions.”

The Trust worked in collaboration with Welch Allyn to safely and reliably connect the monitoring devices to the Trust’s Cerner electronic patient record system. Devices have now been installed in 14 clinical areas, supporting 243 beds across the Trust’s hospitals, whilst reducing the need to manually input two million pieces of data. The Trust has captured more than 90,000 sets of NEWS, providing a profile of risk of deterioration of patients.

 About Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust

* Imperial College Healthcare is one of the largest NHS trusts in the UK, offering a wide range of acute and specialist care for local communities as well as for patients nationally and internationally.

* It runs five hospitals – Charing Cross, Hammersmith, Queen Charlotte’s and Chelsea, St Mary’s and the Western Eye – as well as an increasing range of community-based services.

* It also plays a lead role in healthcare research and education, as part of one of the UK’s nine academic health science centres and 20 National Institute of Health Research biomedical research centers.

* To keep up-to-date with the Trust’s performance, please follow the link: https://www.imperial.nhs.uk/about-us/how-we-are-doing

* Imperial College Healthcare is one of the Global Digital Exemplar organisations.

About Hill-Rom Holdings, Inc.
Hill-Rom is a leading global medical technology company with more than 10,000 employees worldwide. We partner with health care providers in more than 100 countries, across all care settings, by focusing on patient care solutions that improve clinical and economic outcomes in five core areas: Advancing Mobility, Wound Care and Prevention, Patient Monitoring and Diagnostics, Surgical Safety and Efficiency and Respiratory Health. Hill-Rom’s people, products and programs work towards one mission: Every day, around the world, we enhance outcomes for patients and their caregivers. Visit www.hill-rom.com for more information.

Media Contact:

Myriam McLoughlin & Matthew D’Arcy

Highland Marketing

01877 339 922

myriamm@highland-marketing.com

matthewd@highland-marketing.com

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