Nottingham University Hospitals rolls out Nervecentre EPMA

Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust has advanced its Digitisation Programme with the rollout of the Nervecentre EPMA, which will improve patient safety through the reduction of medication errors.

The e-prescribing and medicines administration (EPMA) from Nervecentre provides a safe and efficient closed-loop solution for clinicians. It allows GS1 barcode scanning of patient wristbands and medicines from a mobile device used at the patient’s bedside.

As well as limiting the potential for medication errors, the system is also enabling clinical decision support and delivering time-savings and workflow efficiencies.

According to Nottingham University Hospitals, its use within the cardiology department has resulted in the time taken for discharge summaries to drop to under 10 minutes, from the previous 40+ minutes.

The EPMA is built natively upon FHIR dose syntax to simplify interoperability for even complex prescriptions.

It generates mandatory information for NHS data sets and audits and opens up rich, real-time intelligence on medicines utilisation, optimisation and administration.

The system incorporates the NHS’ Dictionary of Medicines and Devices to ensure information exchanges with prescribing systems in other care settings are standardised. This helps empower mobile prescribing, giving doctors quick access to the national dictionary, local formularies and clinical decision support.

The rollout of the EPMA is the next stage of Nottingham University Hospitals’ Digitisation Programme and another step forward for its hopes of HIMSS 7 accreditation.

Paul Volkaerts, CEO at Nervecentre Software, said: “Our EPMA solution is part of a fully-integrated EPR platform, giving clinicians real-time visibility of data that can influence complex prescribing decisions; pathology results, vital signs, medical history, drug charts, current medications and contraindications.

“Integrating EPMA at NUH within the rest of the Nervecentre digital platform has enabled the trust to further strengthen themselves as an exemplar of safer patient flow.”

Nottingham University Hospitals joins University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Sherwood Forest Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in moving to the Nervecentre EPMA.