Global interoperability leader Enovacom has joined forces with Nordic mobile nursing app specialist Medanets to give frontline nursing staff mobile access to seamless comprehensive patient data. The collaboration will enable safer, more efficient care by providing healthcare staff with simple access to data from multiple monitors and devices and digitising repetitive processes.
Through the partnership, medical device data is automatically gathered using Enovacom’s Patient Connect interoperability platform. This is fed through to the hospital’s electronic health record (EHR) and to the Medanets mobile nursing app in real-time, giving staff access to comprehensive patient data at the point of care.
The Medanets app enables nurses to capture vital signs and other nursing data on a smartphone, replacing the cumbersome paper-based approaches that nursing staff often have to carry out. The app comes with a broad range of time-saving tools such as task lists, photo uploads and messaging.
The solution has proven to save thousands of hours of time a year for nursing staff across the Nordic region. A recent customer evaluation found that using the standard features of the app can save at least 70 hours of staff time per month per ward.
The two organizations are already working together at a newly-built development at Central Finland Central Hospital in Jyväskylä, Finland. Since work began in late 2020, Enovacom has fed data from 1,500 devices into the EHR and Medanets to give clinical and nursing teams accurate and timely data.
“The Enovacom and Medanets solutions are very complementary,” said Simon Chassain, Area Sales Manager for Enovacom. “Medanets provides a user-friendly front-end for e-observations and many more nursing activities.”
“By helping nurses with tools that are the most time-saving, such as observations, our app becomes an integral part of their workflow. This is delivering huge extra value to our customers,” said Juha-Matti Ranta, Chief Executive Officer of Medanets.
Medanets and Enovacom – which is now a subsidiary of Orange Business Services – are looking to work more closely across the collective customer base, as nursing staff become a central part of global moves to a mobile-driven, digital-first approach to frontline care.
Supporting the rise of digital nursing and healthcare interoperability
The rise of the digital nurse has been a feature of healthcare’s response to Covid-19. A recent study in the British Medical Journal noted that nurses should embrace technology to maximize the benefits to patient care. Tasks undertaken by nurses that do not add enough value – such as recording observations using pen and paper – may be better integrated into technology enabled processes.
The UK’s Health Foundation found that 61% of NHS staff surveyed agreed that the NHS should be looking to build on developments during the pandemic and use technology more in the long term.
Alongside this, there is a global push for greater health IT interoperability. This is exemplified by the Nordic Interoperability Project, which is looking to use digital technology and data sharing to support a more sustainable healthcare system.
A study noted by WHO found that unusable health IT systems are putting frontline healthcare staff off technology, just when it is vital it becomes more widely adopted to meet pandemic-driven demand. User-friendly, interoperable solutions can provide an answer. In response, the new COVID-19 recovery programme EU4Health is looking to widen the use of technology across European health systems.
“Our collaboration with Medanets means we can provide the digital nurse and others with an end-to-end digitised healthcare platform of the future,” says Simon. “IT leads can share data from new and existing technology, and have care teams access this at the point of care. This is a clear demonstration of the value of technology in healthcare.”
“Enhanced by our work with Enovacom, Medanets provides the mobile nursing app that can give many hospitals an effective and affordable route to digitisation and data-driven healthcare,” adds Juha-Matti. “Our partnership means that nurses play a leading role in using data to enhance the quality of care.”
