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Every NHS Trust will be aware of this critically important issue, so it's not appropriate to go into details of the need for such a system; they have been well documented by Prof Sir George Alberti. Focused_On Health do not believe Bed Management to be a difficult technical issue, but there is one overiding organisational requirement which is that any Bed Management System will fail without Teamwork and Co-operation between Consultants, Nurses and Management.
We have tried to take the best of the old practices and develop them to bring in modern technology. The Whiteboard was a very good, popular method for managing a Ward. We've tried to retain the WhiteBoard, but added to it by backing it with a central database.
When a NHS Hospital Trust has Wards and Beds in different physical locations, this database becomes doubly important and by using visual methods to display the database information we effectively provide "A WhiteBoard for the Trust".
The information feeding a real-time Bed Management system can only be captured at Ward Level and unless the Ward Staff maintain this information, then there is the certainty that the foundations of the system will fail. Quite simply, the operation of a Bed Management System must be integral with the working practices for the Ward staff.
In order to make such a change popular we have, therefore, been keen to include any features which can make life easier for the Nurses. Extra tasks are just what they do not need!
Our software is totally Microsoft based: Visio for the graphical displays, SQL/DB for the central database, coded from Visual Studio.NET in C#. This means that it is easy to interface to any services which acknowledge standard networking protocols. Hence, our Beds will interface to an existing PAS (Patient Administration System). The other benefit of such a standard approach is the wide range of utilities available for reporting or monitoring.
In accordance with our Credamus (More About Us), we will "Tell it how it is". We've got an excellent design and we have a prototype demonstration system for this design.
This prototype was been presented to several Trusts and as well as receiving very positive acclaim, we also received some very useful feedback which has, of course, been fed back into the design.
We have the programming for about 50% of a production level system complete. Probably about six months programming remains to get to a "Pilot Stage" Implementation.
Some three years ago, the NPfIT said they would address the Bed Management issue and several SHA's took this to mean that no other solution was allowable so we suspended our development schedule.
In order to resurrect this project we need a committed Trust who can guarantee the Management, Nursing and Consultants co-operation and who would be prepared to 'partner' with us on the completion of this very important software.
If this is of interest to you, then please Contact Us and we'd be delighted to show you the prototype system through an on-line meeting.
OPTIMISED RESOURCES : GREATER PATIENT CARE