BMI Group’s Chaucer Hospital Heightens Patient Care with First careTrends™ System in UK

March 09, 2006 (PRLEAP.COM) Health News
SAN MATEO, Calif. – March 9, 2006 Chaucer Hospital in Canterbury, UK successfully trials the careTrends™ Wireless Bridge system from Sensitron (UK) PLC, a wireless healthcare innovations company. Stephen Gough, Executive Director of The Chaucer Hospital, said, “The installation of careTrends allows our medical staff to electronically monitor their patients and record their outcomes accurately and efficiently. Our nurses have been ready converts as the system allows them more one-on-one time with their patients, something I believe is central to providing a higher quality of care, whilst ensuring patient safety.”
Ed Cowdery, CEO of Sensitron UK, said, “I’m glad that our first installation in the UK is with such a technologically-progressive and forward-looking hospital. I look forward to continuing our development of a long-term relationship with Chaucer Hospital and the entire BMI Group.”
The initial stages of the trial concentrated on Chaucer’s long-stay Cornwallis ward, which includes 24 private rooms and 4 High-Dependency Beds. The initial focus is on general bed monitoring, as well as the system’s ability to enable temporary High Dependency Beds, thus increasing the hospital’s capacity for surgical procedures. Subsequently, careTrends will be integrated with Chaucer’s existing admin and nurse-call systems, allowing Chaucer to benefit from the full functionality of the careTrends solution—which substantially reduces the time lag between the time the vital signs are taken at the patient’s bedside and the time they can be displayed at the nurse’s station. This not only improves both nurse and patient satisfaction, since nurses spend more time attending to patients, it also reduces transcription errors by electronically capturing and transmitting clinical data from monitoring devices.

The Efficient and Practical Software
Sensitron’s careTrends enables a wide array of vital signs and other clinical data to be transmitted wirelessly, via secure encryption, to any existing server-based electronic patient record. Sensitron’s patented system works with monitors from different manufacturers, including legacy systems, and is an integrated open system, which sits well with the home healthcare, nursing home and assisted living facility markets, in addition to hospitals. With Sensitron’s careTrends system, potential errors in data transmission are reduced by dating and timing all data, which creates an effective audit trail. The system directly links point-of-care medical devices with clinical information systems, thus reducing staff time and clinical risk, and allowing medical staff to maintain a higher standard of clinical care.
The careTrends system also addresses healthcare providers’ needs, including immediate access to information and reduction in paperwork. Patients’ data and trends can be presented intra-hospital, inter-hospital, at a clinician’s office, or via any web-based PDA or telephone.

About BMI Healthcare (www.bmihealthcare.co.uk)
BMI Healthcare is a group of 49 acute care private patient hospitals around the United Kingdom which has over 2,400 beds and handles over 250,000 inpatient and 750,000 outpatient visits each year. One of its main hospitals is the Chaucer Hospital, located in Canterbury, Kent, and has 50 beds. Each hospital has an experienced doctor on-site 24 hours a day to support patient care and a fully-qualified nursing, clinical and support team—as well as diagnostic and treatment technology relevant to the patient procedures undertaken.

About Sensitron (UK) PLC (www.sensitron.net)
Sensitron UK PLC is a UK-based company offering medical software solutions to the UK and Irish healthcare markets, utilizing the careTrends™ Wireless Bridge system. The patented breakthrough system minimizes transcription errors and eliminates lag time between the reading, capture, documentation and dissemination of clinical data. This is accomplished by communicating vital signs and other data from wirelessly-enabled, legacy point-of-care medical devices at the bedside. Sensitron UK PLC is a privately-held company.
About Sensitron, Inc. (http://www.sensitron.net)
Sensitron, Inc., based in San Mateo, Calif., is a wireless healthcare innovations company that has developed the careTrends™ Wireless Bridge system. The breakthrough system minimizes transcription errors and eliminates lag time between the reading, capture, and documentation of clinical data. This is accomplished by communicating vital signs and other data from wirelessly enabled point-of-care medical devices at the bedside. Sensitron, founded in 1997, is a privately held company, and is expanding internationally via channel partners.