Alcidion rolls out new capabilities to help healthcare organisations manage the COVID-19 outbreak
MAR 29TH 2020
Melbourne, Australia: Alcidion has been closely monitoring the global COVID-19 health crisis and is working with healthcare customers to optimise its solutions to respond to their immediate needs, and to support frontline staff to monitor infected patients and those with specific care requirements.
As the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases continues to rise, Alcidion has designed a new COVID-19 assessment tool in its early warning software Patientrack to help hospitals identify potential cases sooner. Patientrack, which is already used by hospitals across Australia, New Zealand and the UK to detect deadly conditions like sepsis and acute kidney injury, can now be used by nurses to carry out critical assessments of each patient presenting to hospital with a respiratory illness.
The COVID-19 assessment tool is now live and in use at a NHS UK Trust and is available to all hospitals using Patientrack at no additional cost. Alcidion has also configured the New Zealand Ministry of Health COVID screening assessment in its Patientrack solution, developed with input from a respiratory physician.
When using the tool, hospital staff on the ward are guided to a series of questions covering the patient’s symptoms, including the patient’s circumstances and their physiological measurements. This key information is then entered directly into Patientrack, so nurses can track observations via a computer or mobile device so it’s accessible to all healthcare staff responsible for the patient’s care.
The red text appears as a guidance for the clinician, based on the information entered into the assessment.
Questions are tailored to the hospitals’ specific coronavirus assessment criteria and can be configured by the hospital to keep up with the evolving situation. Depending on the hospital’s requirements, the system can then place a flag on the patient’s record or automatically alert appropriate healthcare professionals like respiratory doctors and infection control teams if answers indicate signs of COVID-19.
The tool removes the need for paper records and enables hospitals to provide real-time and complete information to health departments such as NHS England, on the number of people screened, tested positive and who have died. Clinical leads will also be able to use the information internally to gauge a site-wide view of their hospital to see all affected patients and their status across the hospital.
David Proctor, the implementation consultant at Alcidion who built the initial coronavirus assessment tool, said: “This is much about supporting early intervention and early treatment. Nurses have always used Patientrack to help identify deterioration early, and to allow a swift clinical response. This new development is designed to help them detect coronavirus early, so that hospitals can deliver treatment sooner, move patients to intensive care faster, and get them the care they need more quickly.”
To increase support for customers during this time, Alcidion has also developed a dashboard and mobile solution as part of its Miya Precisionplatform for improved home and hospital monitoring. The dashboard displays risk based on relevant criteria for all test results including COVID-19 as well as time since diagnosis, location, isolation status, active problems, action plans and other triage considerations. Alcidion is working with customers to use the Miya Precision Hospital at a Glance capability to provide them with the heightened visibility of patients of interest, accessible to all clinician across the hospital.
The COVID-19 pandemic has also prompted a New Zealand DHB to speed up its rollout of Alcidion’s clinical communications solution Smartpage to other clinical areas and registrars to provide effective communication between clinicians, with access to patient status 24/7.
Kate Quirke, CEO and Managing Director of Alcidion, said: “We are committed to helping our partners tackle coronavirus in any way we can. We are working with hospitals that use Patientrack to test and implement the coronavirus assessment tool quickly, which we will be providing free of charge for as long as they need it. Discussions are ongoing as to how we can also adapt our wider range of technologies to respond quickly to the needs of frontline staff at this difficult time.”
ALC Price at posting:
12.0¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
