Beacon develops unique web-based Patient Discharge System for Addenbrooke’s

Overview

Addenbrooke’s, part of Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, is a local hospital, the teaching hospital for the University of Cambridge, a centre for specialist services, and a leader in research and development. It is the local district hospital for the approximately 0.5 million people who live in the Cambridge sub-region and the surrounding district. In 2003-2004, 61,910 men, women and children were treated as inpatients on hospital wards with 62,684 accident and emergency attendances and 385,249 visits to outpatient clinics. Faced with these significant numbers of patients, Addenbrooke’s required a new system for producing patient discharge documents and managing the whole patient discharge process.

Business Requirements

Addenbrooke’s had a major requirement for a new discharge document production system that would meet the key objectives of improving clinical care, improving the patient experience, reducing discharge times, improving the quality of the information given to GPs, and increasing the quality of patient information captured. They needed a system that would replace manual methods of producing discharge letters, allow data input at any stage of the patients’ journey through a ward, not just on discharge. In addition the system needed to manage pharmacy and drug dispensation and provide GP’s and other community carers with an accurate summary of a patients’ information on the day of discharge.

Our Solution

Developed initially for Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, Beacon has developed a unique web-based, integrated clinical database and discharge document production system, called e-Discharge. The system enables care professionals and clerical staff to dispense with previous manual methods for producing discharge letters thereby making the process more accurate, efficient and effective. e-Discharge also reduces patient discharge times and improves the quality of patient information. Since all the patients’ information is stored electronically and presented in a succinct discharge summary, it means staff can provide quality information to GPs and other carers on the patients continuing care in the community. As a web-based system, all the information is immediately available across the Trust and at hand for any future admissions. It also provides essential information as part of any follow-up visits to outpatients. It manages pharmacy and drug dispensation and allows thorough checks to be performed enabling users to comply with drug dispensing legal requirements. In addition, e-Discharge facilitates clinical audits by storing easily accessible data in electronic format. Currently at Addenbrooke’s, for every in-patient stay, an e-Discharge summary is produced – this amounts to around 800 per week and forms part of the patient’s electronic medical record.

“e-Discharge has proved to be an invaluable addition to our internal discharge process and represents a huge step forward for us. From the outset, we developed a good close working relationship with Beacon. They quickly understood our core business and what we were trying to achieve”

Dianne Nixon, Addenbrooke’s IT Program Manager.

Technology used

e-Discharge is written using Microsoft .NET technologies with a SQL Server database for extensibility and ease of maintenance. The system can be easily integrated with other current software and document management systems and has been designed using standard web-based browser technology so it is easy to deploy.

• Microsoft .NET Framework
• Microsoft ASP .NET
• Microsoft Visual Basic .NET
• Microsoft Visual C, C++
• Microsoft Visual Studio .NET
• Microsoft SQL Server
• Java Script

Beacon is now offering this system to other NHS Trusts and health care providers in order that they may take advantage of the benefits this system provides.

Find out more …..

If you would like to find out more information about e-Discharge, please call us on: 01223 506616 or email nhsenquiries@beacon-ct.co.uk