EHiN 2 – session C2: Innovation at the hospital

Telemedicine in ambulances, patient security, and dynamic online interaction in emergency health care. New implementation of technology wil change patient security for the better.

Moderator: Sverre Fossen, Norwegian Health Network

1. Telemedicine in ambulances – Improving quality and saving lives

By Dirk Peek og Sebastiaan Alves

The Health Platform Telemedicine (HPT) connects the doctor in the hospital with ambulances, general practitioners and other hospitals or patients at home.

The main purpose of the solution is supporting paramedics through real-time communication with the ER in a hospital. All the vital data that is measured in the ambulance (blood pressure, ECG, pulse, saturation, temperature) is visible for the physicians in the hospital. If needed, it can be combined with secure audio and/or video connection to communicate with the paramedics and patient.

Telemedicine can improve the quality and efficiency of patient transport and can even save lives. By improving the communication between the paramedics and the emergency doctor, better decisions can be made if it’s necessary to transport the patient, and preparations can already start at the hospital. The ‘door to needle time’ can be shortened, which is very important in the case of heart failures and strokes. Earlier treatment is crucial for the patient to survive or to avoid physical damage.

The platform will be delivered from a private cloud as a complete service. It’s scalable, based on standards and contains multi-vendor connectors for medical instruments in the front and with EPR software on the back-side to store the relevant information during the episodes.

In the presentation Dirk Peek and Sebastiaan Alves will tell you about the first results of the pilots of this solution in the Netherlands, their vision on future developments and how Hewlett Packard Enterprise drives this concept with an innovative eco-system of partners.

2. Increased patient security obtained through a holistic quality approach – Structured and continuous improvement work through compliance assessment

 By Ida Normann and Elisabeth Hessen

Healthcare services have a continuous challenge in preventing errors and adverse events from occurring. Patient safety has become a top priority. According to statistics from Norwegian Directorate of Health as much as 43% of the serious events/cases in 2015 are related to inadequate compliance with requirements and procedures.

Quality and improvement work in Norwegian hospitals has traditionally focused on the reporting and monitoring of adverse incidents, reporting deviation, supervision and audits. This approach to patient security improvement work has predominantly been reactive in nature. Causal analysis and implementation of improvement occurs after the damage has taken place.

Together with five hospital trusts from South-Eastern Norway Regional Health Authority, Computas AS is introducing a system that supports a more proactive approach to potential deviation detection that could significantly increase patient security. This system is based on a total quality approach, where compliance assessment of external laws and regulations are matched against internal routines and procedures throughout the organization. This gives the hospitals the opportunity to focus more on preventing failures by working with the proactive improvement work – before damage has occurred.

Doing things right from the start, to reduce system failure in order to prevent human error, will increase patient safety.

3. Dynamic online interaction in emergency health care.

By Oddvar Hagen, Universitetssykehuset Nord Norge HF

Å handle dynamisk online i akuttmedisinen er den raskeste måten å handle i forhold til akuttpasienten. Samtidig gjør vi spesialistene tilgjengelig for pasienter mye tidligere enn vi gjør klarte tidligere. Dynamisk online samhandling har potensiale til å bedre akuttmedisinsk samhandling, og faktisk det meste av ø.hjelps behandling. Men også her må vi være nasjonalt kompatibel skal vi få løftet akuttmedisinen på nasjonalt nivå.