The Wellbeing Services County of Southwest Finland – Varha

Varha uses Medanets’ mobile solutions in all of its spheres of responsibility, across 60 wards at Turku University Hospital as well as at primary healthcare units in Kaarina, Raisio, Lieto and Paimio. Varha was the first Finnish provider of specialist medical care to adopt Medanets’ Medication solution. The services county now also uses the Medanets Observation values, Early Warning Score (EWS) and Monitored patients features.

Varha carries out over half a million instances of mobile documentation a month, saving thousands of hours that can then be spent on actual nursing work. The first solutions were adopted in 2015–2016.

Data in the right place all at once using Observation values and Monitored patients

With the Medanets app, healthcare professionals looking after a patient can document the patient’s information directly into the Electronic Health Record using a smartphone. They can also see previously documented values on the same device.

“The nurse always sees the previous observation value before documenting the new observation value. Nursing staff can also note changes and react to them immediately,” explains Chief Medical Information Officer Pirkko Kortekangas.

Medanets has made documentation noticeably faster, with all information available in almost real-time during the doctor’s rounds. The way we work has changed in that you no longer need to lug around a pile of papers for recording values, or have to spend time later trying to remember where you put that particular piece of paper. Medanets has reduced the number of duplicate entries significantly.

Jarno Uutela, Nurse, Turku University Hospital

Improved patient safety with the Medication solution

Thanks to the Medanets Medication solution, it is easy to check medications prescribed to a patient and submit administration entries with a smartphone right from the patient’s room.

The solution was designed to support nurses and help ensure appropriate pharmacotherapy and timely administration entries in the medication programme. During doctors’ rounds, patients are identified by scanning their patient wristband, allowing the up-to-date information retrieved from the Electronic Health Record to be used to check that the right medication, dose, administration route and time are being adhered to.

Medication administration entries are recorded immediately into the Electronic Health Record, avoiding double administration of medications as all involved can check the current situation. The number of human errors occurring is also falling and time saved can be spent looking after patients, as nurses can check medication prescriptions and previous documentation records right from the patient’s bedside.

Varha’s Development Services Planner, Ville Jalo, emphasises the importance of up-to-date information in pharmacotherapy. “The impact of the pharmacotherapy a patient is receiving can be assessed more accurately when administration of each medication is documented right away,” states Jalo.

Automated calculation of EWS

EWS help those providing medical care to identify patients whose situation is deteriorating acutely. Varha uses Medanets’ EWS feature, which calculates an EWS automatically, instead of using the traditional pen and paper method. One major benefit of the mobile solution is that it does not create extra work for nurses. The information needed to calculate the score is collected as part of the patient’s routine care process. The mobile app automatically calculates the patient’s score and gives appropriate clinical guidance to the nurse.

“With the Medanets solutions, we can improve the quality of care, free up working time from repeated data processing, and reduce the number of erroneous entries. The information is always up to date, in the right place immediately, and visible to those who are involved in the patient’s care but perhaps not physically present on the ward,” Kortekangas explains gratefully.