Bradford Teaching Hospitals and Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trusts are poised to start implementing a new maternity information system which brings together care records and information from fetal monitoring.
The system, Eclipse MIS, has been developed by Huntleigh Healthcare, makers of non-invasive healthcare devices, and Care Records, a company specialising in clinical records. Care Records was bought recently by Huntleigh Healthcare.
The company says: “Eclipse MIS has been developed in close consultation with leading clinicians in the UK and provides a unique and seamless solution to maternity information management and electronic archiving of CTGs [information produced during fetal monitoring].”
In addition to serving maternity units, the system also allows authorised professionals, such as GPs and community midwives working outside the unit, to access information over appropriately secure, fast links.
Business unit manager for software systems, David Stanger, explained: “Any GP office can have access to the system as if they were in hospital.”
Eventually, community midwives should be able to access and record information in real time about mothers and babies while they are out visiting. Until the infrastructure exists to support that facility, Stanger said an off-line solution had been devised to allow midwives to fill out a form on a laptop and upload the information when they return to base.
Bridget Dack, IT liaison midwife at Surrey and Sussex Healthcare commented: “We are delighted to be working with Huntleigh on this important and ambitious project. Upgrading our existing maternity system to provide real benefits for both patients and clinical users is a priority for the trust.”
In Bradford the system will also support a new research project, Born in Bradford, which aims to explore in detail the factors which lead to illness in babies and children.
Dr Dean Johnson, director of planning and performance at Bradford Teaching Hospitals, said: “Finding a flexible maternity system to support a wide range of specialist antenatal and intrapartum care in both community and acute settings has been a challenge. The addition of real-time CTG monitoring and archiving and support for the Born in Bradford project is a tremendous bonus.”
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