No matter how efficiently hospital staff implement infection control protocols, identifying the source of an infection can be complex, and ‘take days’.
Point-of-care software specialist, Hospedia, says that “until ‘patient zero’ has been identified, it is impossible to track the infection’s journey through the hospital”.
In a detailed Deloitte analysis, Hospedia’s ExtraMed Patient Flow Management System has been estimated to offer Trust benefits of up to £884,000 annually by preventing infection outbreaks, and supporting infection control processes during outbreaks.
Extramed stores and shares real-time patient information across all departments, making it fast and easy to track a patient’s ‘journey’, and identify the high-risk patients with whom they have had direct contact. The system works with the interactive whiteboards updated in real-time by nursing and medical staff, with a patient with an infection highlighted in yellow, and the infection control team can then quickly identify likely transmission points on screen, “isolating beds associated with infection, and identifying ‘patient zero’.”
