Smartphones Replaced Paper at Nordland Hospital – Much-Needed Help in the Midst of the Crisis

To support nursing care during the rapidly spreading pandemic, Nordland Hospital successfully introduced a mobile app on a quick schedule. They are the first in Norway to utilise this digital solution.

Emergency circumstances have put the limited resources of healthcare organisations under considerable strain. If ever, measures that support the work of nursing staff and proactive patient care are needed now.

At the beginning of April, Nordland Hospital started piloting a mobile app for nursing at a rapid pace. The app was to facilitate the treatment of the growing number of patients suffering from COVID-19. The pilot was launched in one ward and now, after a successful implementation, the solution will be taken into use in all wards at Nordland Hospital.  Multidisciplinary collaboration with the hospital, EHR vendor DIPS and the app provider Medanets made it possible to deploy the app fast and completely remotely, thus avoiding unnecessary risks of infection.

Reducing Administrative Burden

For years, it has been reported that administrative tasks take up to 50 percent of the working time of special healthcare professionals.. As the number of nurses is limited, it is crucial that their time is not wasted, and they can focus on the actual patient care.

The objective of Nordland Hospital is to reduce the workload caused by administrative tasks by performing more and more of them with the help of smartphones. Earlier, these tasks were carried out using a computer or pen and paper. When nurses no longer have to do administrative work in front of a computer screen, patients’ conditions can be followed more personally. During crises, the saved time could even be used to take care of a larger number of patients.

When COVID19 hit us in March, we needed a solution to reduce the need to physically visit our wards to look up vital data on paper. Medanets has made a big contribution here. Now the doctors are able to find the patients‘ vital data in the electronic journal from every computer in the hospital. From the bedside, nurses send vital data directly to the journal while using the Medanetsapp. The solution was implemented in less than two weeks. This must be some kind of a record regarding implementing a new IT-solution to a hospital.

Lars-Eirik Hansen, Centre Manager, Nordland Hospital HF

Juha-Matti Ranta, CEO of Medanets, the provider of the implemented nursing app, says that according to many studies carried out at their customer hospitals, nursing staff can save up to 100 hours per ward every month when observations and measurements are documented on smartphones instead of computers.

A rapid, clear and complete view of a patient’s condition

With the help of the nursing app, the entire care team can monitor patients’ conditions in real time, regardless of their location. They have access to the latest measurements, risk scores and COVID-19 status all the time. This speeds up the detection of and response to changes in patients’ conditions.

When the number of patients increases and hospitals become crowded, it is even more important to have a clear and quick view of the patients’ conditions in the whole ward. Predictive measures can save lives.

The nurses love the solution and after just days in use they can’t think of going back to the old way of doing things.

Lars Eirik Hansen, Centre Manager, Nordland Hospital HF

At Nordland Hospital, evidence-based instructions can now be passed on via smartphones to the nursing staff. The instructions support decision-making and offer guidance to the user. In a hectic hospital environment, nurses‘ attention must be on various things at the same time. Therefore, an alert received from the app immediately at the point of care, such as “the patient has a high-risk classification, please consult a doctor for further instructions” can act as a wake-up call.

Increasing demand for mobile solutions

Mobile solutions for healthcare have become more common in the world since the 2010s. In the Nordic countries, the Medanets app is the most used mobile solution for nursing. It is used in more than 40 hospitals and primary healthcare units in Finland and Sweden – and now with Nordland Hospital, also in Norway.

Because of the coronavirus pandemic, many healthcare organisations have woken up to the need for a mobile solution. They are trying to increase treatment capacity using all possible means.

Particularly now at the time of the pandemic, customers appreciate the following benefits of healthcare mobile solutions:

• Medical records stay up to date.
• Professionals who contribute to treatment remotely have access to data.
• Information does not need to be processed multiple times, which saves time.
• Professionals get clear, evidence-based instructions.
• Smartphones make it possible to act in a more hygienic way. There is no need to take paperwork to hospital rooms with patients suffering from infections. In addition, nursing staff can spend less time in these rooms.

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