How EKORA® saves precious clinical time and reduces clinical risk at NHS Lothian.

NHS Lothian is made up of three major sites (the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, Western General Hospital and St John’s Hospital, Livingston) and uses the EKORA® Devices module across the health board to manage almost 7,000 Cardiology patients.

 The problem

 Prior to implementing EKORA® this large region, serving a population of 850,000 people, was wholly reliant on paper-based notes which posed a source of high clinical risk.

With all patient data across all the three hospitals being paper-based there were critical issues with sharing patient information, collaborating across sites and risking patient health with no access for clinicians to immediate patient information. Records were often not where they were needed, easily accessible or kept up to date with vital information. An additional complication to paper notes was that they were often being updated with poor handwriting or even incomplete data. All of these issues caused a huge amount of wasted time for all clinicians involved and posed a risk to patient health in emergency situations.

 Implementation

 Highlighted as a high priority, funding was approved for a digital patient, device and department management system to replace paper-based notes and radically reduce clinical risk and improve efficiency and patient care.

Following a competitive tender, EKORA® was chosen as the most robust and intuitive system that can grow with the needs of the Health Board.

The results

All NHS Lothian cardiac device patient records are now held on EKORA® and patient information is now immediately available to all cardiology clinicians at all three sites and cross-sharing of vital information can be done in seconds rather than hours with all records are up to date and error free.

Device advisory alerts are flagged onto patient records when necessary and understanding which patients are affected by these now takes seconds, not days, with staff now 100% confident in their patient information.

Digitising the system with EKORA® has also enabled junior physiologists to run clinics knowing that more senior colleagues are available on the phone who have immediate access to the same data, saving time, resources and ensuring accuracy and excellence of patient care.

“EKORA® has been developed by a team who know and understand what cardiology departments need. Intuitive and simple, we hardly needed any training. It has become an invaluable system for our department.”

NHS LOTHIAN