eWard

eWARD enables a pharmaceutical care plan to be created for a patient episode, recording risk factors, past medical history and active problems, and enables (with the patient’s consent) sharing of this information electronically with community pharmacists, improving patient safety and care.

The prescription workflow functionality provided by eWARD has enabled NHS Forth Valley to reduce waiting times for discharge prescriptions by 50%, with 90% of prescriptions ready in under two hours of the request.

With the aid of eWARD, 80-90% of patients who come into acute care have medication details electronically recorded and medicines reconciliation completed within 24 hours, 7 days a week. This compares favourably to the previous figure of 10%, 5 days a week and has helped to reduce hospital death rates.

eWARD provides an intuitive user interface (designed to support SMART Boards and other interactive displays, including drag-and-drop) encouraging real-time update of patient movements and enabling management of ward capacity on a day-to-day basis.

eWARD's real-time bed management information allows staff to immediately see when a bed is available for another patient and to plan and anticipate patient arrivals from different wards.

eWARD enables monitoring of ward occupancy across the whole hospital (across multiple hospitals, if required), enabling vacant beds to be located quickly and providing information on ward capacity and status (e.g. ward is empty, ward has vacancies, ward is full), as well as details of vacant, reserved, and occupied beds, and patients that have not been allocated a bed.

Formalisation and standardisation of the process to handover patient care from one nursing shift to the next using eWARD supports Information Governance best practice and reduces clinical risk through the elimination of duplication and transcription of patient demographics and other clinical information during nursing handover.

eWARD enables staff to request that specific tasks be performed at specific times, e.g. "take blood sample at midnight", "change bandage in the morning", and for other staff to perform those tasks and record when the tasks have been completed. Monitoring support indicates which tasks are outstanding, due or complete, enabling appropriate prioritisation.

eWARD supports the handover of patient care from the day staff to the Hospital at Night Team, enabling day staff to notify the Hospital at Night Team of patients who will require attention during the night, and for the Hospital at Night team to provide feedback to the day staff on those patients.

eWARD enables night ward staff to alert the Hospital at Night Team to patients who take ill during the night and require attention from the Hospital at Night Team, and also provides a mechanism to notify the day staff of this. An automated scoring mechanism, based on patient assessments such as blood pressure and heart rate recommends a timescale for the patient requiring attention to be seen by the Hospital at Night Team.

GPs in Forth Valley have been impressed by the improvements in the quality, clarity, and consistency that the new Immediate Discharge Letter (IDL) generated by eWARD provides compared with the previous manually-produced discharge letters.

IDLs are now being sent electronically from eWARD via SCI Gateway to all GP practices in NHS Forth Valley from most wards in Stirling Royal Infirmary and Falkirk and District Royal Infirmary. This means practices receive them in a matter of hours, well within the government target of 24 hours. The system has been described as "brilliant and very easy to use".

Stopped drugs and the reasons why they were stopped are shown clearly on the discharge letters generated by eWARD. Along with other improvements in the IDL this has resulted in significantly fewer queries from GPs regarding the content of discharge letters, saving secretaries time tracking down case notes and/or consultants to clarify issues.

eWARD allows users to create a new episode movement quickly by scanning the CHI number barcode on the patient's wristband, automatically receiving the patient into the local ward.

eWARD provides secure remote access to patients' notes and episode details, enabling pharmacists to access information without having to physically be on the ward, for example.

eWARD supports a systematic approach to patient care, integrating the work of medical, nursing and paramedical staff, enabling more effective and efficient collaboration, saving time and improving patient care.

eWARD's comprehensive audit trail provides automatic auditing of viewing and modification of data, improving traceability.