Electronic whiteboards on wards

The Visiward system, developed in partnership with CSC, replaces the handwritten whiteboards traditionally used in wards to display patient information

Patients are to benefit from the introduction and roll-out of a new electronic whiteboard system in hospital wards run by The Pennine Acute Hospital NHS Trust.

The Visiward system replaces the handwritten whiteboards traditionally used in wards to display patient information. The e-whiteboards have meant that more than 2,000 staff are able to see the exact bed location and status of each patient in real-time across the Trust’s five hospital sites.

Doctors and nursing staff are now able to see detailed patient information at a glance, such as expected discharge time and alerts showing whether patients are medically fit. The development significantly reduces ward disruption and enables nursing staff to spend more time with the patients rather than on administration.

The new IT system enables time savings for bed managers who have to telephone round 126 inpatient wards on the hour to check the availability of beds and the location and status of over 270,000 inpatients who are treated by the Trust every year. This has made significant time and financial savings.

Following the implementation in January 2012, the time spent making these calls has been significantly reduced culminating in the equivalent of two members of staff spending 238 days ringing round wards to just one member of staff spending the equivalent of 106 days per year.

All inpatient stay areas now have the e-whiteboards and the rollout to day case units and observation areas will be completed this year.

Mick Heaton, senior project manager at The Pennine Acute Hospitals Trust, said: "Now that we have the e-boards nurses should no longer be faced with constant interruptions which allows them to focus more time on patient care. Meanwhile, bed managers are able to plan their workflows allowing them to focus on predictive bed management, which helps to reduce the trust’s average length of stay.

“Not only has this meant that staff resource can now be used more efficiently to care for patients but the right care is also given to the right patient at the right time, which provides us with better patient satisfaction and safety gains.”

Marian Carroll, the Trust’s director of nursing, is pleased with the wards who have embraced the new e-whiteboards. She said: “The Trust plans to rollout out electronic orders and electric prescribing to improve clinical outcomes for our patients over the next year, so having an up-to-date, accurate patient location is key.

“The e-whiteboard provides a focus for nurses to ensure that admissions, discharges and transfers are recorded in real time and work with the doctors managing Estimated Discharge Dates for patients. Many thanks to the pilot wards who have adopted the whiteboard and for the improvements they have achieved.”

In addition to benefits to ward staff and patients, huge amounts of time has been saved for porters who traditionally made an average of eight 15 minutes trips per day trying to locate patients to transfer to the appropriate place, such as for diagnostic tests, to only then find that the patient has been moved or discharged.

The system has meant that porters no longer waste time searching for patients who are not there. Instead they can use the screens to determine their exact location before setting off thus eliminating these wasted trips and saving an average of two hours per day, the equivalent of 30 days per year.

This has also freed up slots to see more patients in areas such as the X-ray department where delays are caused by porters trying to find missing patients.

Christine Walters, associate director of IT at the Trust, said: “Working in partnership with the supplier, CSC and the clinical teams from all disciplines, we have been able to tailor the e-whiteboards to individual ward needs to ensure it suits the workflows of each specialty.

"The uptake in the use of technology in the NHS by frontline staff can sometimes be challenging unless the end users can see instant and long lasting benefits.

"The e-whiteboards have demonstrated to staff the immediate positive impact that technology can have for both the staff and their patients every day.”

The Trust is continuing to extend the roll out to a total of 93 wards and has also built a business case to deploy the e-whiteboards to the catering units of the hospital. 

Ms Walters added: “We believe that using the e-whiteboards in the catering areas is the first of its kind in the NHS.

"Meals are wasted every year in hospitals as a result of patients being absent from their beds causing unnecessary expense to the NHS. Our business case shows that allowing catering staff to have greater visibility to patient location, we will save more than half of that waste.”