Google Health’s Streams app, which provides a rapid alert when patients are at risk of acute kidney injury (AKI), is due to go live at Barnet Hospital this month.
Streams has reportedly cut the diagnosis of AKI at the Royal Free Hospital from hours to minutes, and will now become available to clinicians at nearby Barnet Hospital.
The app was developed by technology experts at Google Health in collaboration with clinicians at the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust (RFL) and launched in November 2016.
Its rollout has been so successful that up to 60 doctors and nurses at Barnet Hospital, which is part of the RFL, will also be able to receive alerts on their mobile devices when patients are at risk of AKI, which accounts for 100,000 deaths every year in the UK.
It means they will be able to deliver vital treatment rapidly, improving outcomes for patients and potentially saving lives.
Dr Chris Streatther, RFL group chief medical and deputy chief executive, said: “We are incredibly excited to be able to extend the use of the Streams app to clinicians at Barnet Hospital
“Its use at the Royal Free Hospital has been a huge success and embedding technology which has a proven track record at a greater scale is something we need to do more of in the NHS. I know clinicians at Barnet Hospital cannot wait to get their hands on the app – the next step for us now is to extend its use for other life-threatening conditions like sepsis.”
A peer review into the app published in July 2019 concluded it could save the NHS an average of £2,000 per patient.
However, the review also found that Streams’ e-alerts alone “might fail to improve outcomes”, and that appropriate training was needed for a digital solution to be successful.
Deborah Sanders, Barnet Hospital interim chief executive and RFL group chief nurse, added: “We’re delighted that doctors and nurses at Barnet Hospital now have the Streams app to help deliver even better, safer care to patients.”
The trust said it retains control of patient information at all times. Personal data can only be used for providing the Streams app and for no other purpose.
20 January 2020 @ 10:34
The linked article had more information
“Before the tool was implemented about 12% of AKI cases were missed, but that number has reduced to 3% with clinicians responding to urgent cases within 15 minutes or less, the peer review found.”
Caution is needed with any of these technologies in that they are very good at reducing the amount of missed diagnosis but at the expense of a higher false positive rates with the additional worry and costs which occur with this. As with any article of this nature need to look at these technologies in the round.
14 January 2020 @ 20:19
The AKI calculation is actually quite simple. This article fails to convey whether Streams is doing some clever predictive analysis or merely calculating risk from lab results and alerting someone on a mobile.