Ascom UK is deploying hundreds of its Myco smartphones to enable on-call doctors at the Royal Bolton Hospital to better care for seriously ill patients at night and over weekends.
Initially, 30 handheld Myco smart devices are being used by doctors and night nurse practitioners to triage emergencies across medical, surgical, and orthopaedics wards – the first phase in a rollout of 303 Ascom smartphones, part of an electronic observations project to ‘deliver time-critical alerts’ to clinical teams across Bolton NHS Foundation Trust.
In the next few months, Myco devices will be deployed on paediatric, maternity, and critical care wards. The Ascom technology will be fully integrated with Patientrack, an electronic observations system that will send alerts and crucial clinical information to the Myco devices when patients show signs of deterioration. Different sounds and ‘traffic lights’ based on the severity of the case will enable doctors to acknowledge and triage cases.
The Trust’s chief clinical information officer, Dr Simon Irving (pictured), said: “My ambition is that the Myco devices will completely replace bleeps, which are no longer suitable for a modern NHS. Unlike a bleep, the Myco enables clinicians to call each other, message securely, and interact with escalations from Patientrack.”
