Care providers have been under excessive pressure these past couple of years. With unpredictable surges in admissions and record levels of understaffing crippling day-to-day operations, hospitals are turning to technology to automate tasks and free up time for clinicians to spend delivering first-class patient care.
This blog will explore Zebra Technology’s latest Hospital Vision Study and summarise key takeaways for hospitals considering digital transformation in 2022 and beyond.
1) Empowering Bedside Nurses With Agility
2) Improving Staff Communications With Clinical-Grade Mobile Devices
3) Improving Patient Care By Making Data More Accessible
4) Streamlining Clinical Workflows With Real-Time Location Systems
5) MiTEQ: Supplying Mobile Technology & Asset Tracking Solutions To Care Providers
Empowering Bedside Nurses With Agility
According to Zebra’s Healthcare Vision Study, 97 per cent of nurses will use mobile devices at the bedside in 2022, up more than 30 per cent since 2017. This movement towards mobile-enabled clinicians is helping nurses become more agile within their day-to-day roles – making data more accessible, actionable, and verifiable.
The benefits of allowing nurses to use mobile devices include the following:
- Accessing, updating, and amending patient medical records at bedsides in real-time
- Communicating information to other members of staff without being near them
- Avoiding medication administration errors
- Streamlining patient handovers and improving clinical time management
Enhancing Staff Communications With Clinical-Grade Mobile Devices
According to The Joint Commission, cited within Zebra’s 2022 Healthcare Vision Study, 70% of medical errors are attributable to communication breakdowns. Given that information has to be dispersed across a vast array of departments, including wards, emergency departments, operating theatres, intensive care units, and labs, the speed and accuracy of communications are critical to delivering positive patient experiences.
From a communications perspective, mobile devices are enabling healthcare facilities to benefit from:
- Secure text messaging
- Voice communications
- Picture-taking of wounds/ skin conditions
- Telehealth
- Voice recognition dictation
Improving Patient Care By Making Data More Accessible
In Zebra’s Healthcare Vision Study, 72 per cent of respondents cited an improved quality of patient care as a direct result of clinical mobility. These benefits primarily revolve around reductions in medication administration errors, specimen labelling errors, and improvements to everyday patient care.
As long as hospitals manually transcribe information, clinicians are restricted in their ability to communicate critical information quickly and accurately and rely on repetitive manual workflows to keep track of items moving around facilities.
Mobile technology is making it simple for healthcare facilities to capture and communicate critical information and streamline everyday tasks to improve patient care.
Streamlining Clinical Workflows With Real-Time Location Systems
As referenced within Zebra’s Healthcare Vision Study, RTLS (real-time location systems) solutions are streamlining clinical workflows across four key areas:
- Patient Throughput
- Patient Safety
- Asset tracking
- Staff locations
RTLS solutions are a combination of technologies used to track, manage, and monitor assets in real-time. And, just as we stated in our blog about asset tracking solutions within healthcare facilities, hospitals are using real-time location system solutions to:
- Automate inventory counts
- Ensure medication and general asset lifecycles are automatically logged, alerting clinicians when shelf lives are nearing expiry
- Eliminate the need for assets to be manually scanned
- Deliver visibility of complete asset journeys (from entry into hospitals, through storeroom movements, to point of care and beyond)
- Locate critical equipment in real-time (to their exact spot within a ward or store)
If you want to deploy real-time location technologies into your healthcare facility, contact MiTEQ.
MiTEQ: Supplying Mobile Technology & Asset Tracking Solutions To Care Providers
The MiTEQ team has worked within and alongside NHS and Private Healthcare Trusts for several decades, helping IT, operations, and project managers invest in technology that will improve the tracking and management of their assets.
We can help you navigate new clinical systems and adopt the right mobile technology to overcome challenges and elevate patient care.
The EPR Programme Manager at one NHS Healthcare Trust stated:
“Working to roll out an EPR system within our community hospitals, suppliers’ speed and efficiency directly impact patient care. MiTEQ has proven to be a reliable and efficient solutions provider, providing bespoke hardware to suit our unique requirements. MiTEQ continues to help us easily transform clinical workflows and deploy mobility solutions. I highly recommend them as a technology provider for.