NHS Forth Valley has deployed the Morse electronic patient record (EPR) app, supporting its mobile community staff to work more efficiently and boost collaboration.
As part of NHS Forth Valley’s ongoing review of its digital and e-health strategy, it identified that its EPR system, MiDIS (Multi-Disciplinary Information System), lacked a mobile solution to support staff working in the community.
It deployed the Morse EPR app from Cambric Systems to resolve the issue, giving over 1,000 healthcare professionals access to the latest patient and clinical data remotely.
The solution allows community healthcare staff – including Allied Health Professionals (AHPs) and Community Nursing Services – to work with patient information both on and offline. As a result, healthcare professionals have been able to reduce their travel time and costs, freeing up more resources to attend to patients’ needs.
Nicola Henderson, an AHP eHealth clinical lead and senior dietitian at NHS Forth Valley, said: “Each example of the efficiencies gained using Morse really add up across the organisation to make significant time and cost savings.”
NHS Forth Valley has also seen an 80% reduction in the processing of referrals, as well as a reduction in the duplication of paperwork since deployment.
The new mobile EPR enables staff to share and update healthcare data with colleagues, which supports improved communication and decision-making as results and assessments are accessible by all Morse users.
In addition, there has been a positive impact on the admissions and discharge procedures. By supporting the sharing of environmental and residential information for assessment, patient safety before discharge is improved. The need for home visits has also been reduced.
The new EPR is also supporting the management of services provision. GPs and acute medical and nursing services can use the clinical portal to extract data and create reports to identify where increased demand is needed and deploy staff accordingly.
NHS Scotland as a whole is on the path to transforming the health of the local population. It plans to roll out new digital technologies, following a collaboration by the NHS, universities and industry partners.