Assessing your vitals: Portsmouth ensures efficiency and patient safety with VitalPAC

VitalPAC is a new hand-held computer system being used by staff at Portsmouth Hospitals NHS trust to record and score patient's vital signs. The system enables clinicians to easily and effectively identify deteriorating patients by allowing real-time monitoring of a patient's condition.

Patients in need of urgent medical attention will be identified and treated more rapidly with the help of a new hand-held computer system being used by staff at one of Britain's leading NHS trusts.

Often the sudden deterioration in a patient's condition can be preventable if they are identified in time as being `at risk'. VitalPAC enables clinicians to easily and effectively identify deteriorating patients by allowing real-time monitoring of a patient's condition.

Studies have shown the system to produce three times fewer errors in the recording and scoring of vital signs data compared to traditional pen and paper methods.

VitalPAC in action

VitalPAC, designed by hospital improvement specialist The Learning Clinic in conjunction with Microsoft and Portsmouth Hospitals NHS trust, records, stores, and analyses the data regarding a patient's vital signs (pulse, blood pressure, respiratory rate etc) allowing clinicians to effectively monitor the condition of their patients in real time throughout a hospital stay.

Following a successful in-hospital trial running since March 2005, Portsmouth Hospital NHS trust is today announcing full implementation of VitalPAC across the Queen Alexandra site, its major acute hospital.

Professor Gary Smith, Consultant in Critical Care at Portsmouth Hospitals NHS trust and clinical lead for the VitalPAC project, acknowledges that this is an exciting moment for the trust: "We believe the VitalPAC system to be a key tool in ensuring improved patient-focused care, enhanced patient safety and greater efficiency in the care of sick patients."

Increased efficiency and patient care

Early results indicate that just one ward may save £1million per year by using the system. The tool does not only identify the sickest patients, it also indicates which patients may be well enough to be discharged or whose condition suggests they do not need a hospital bed in the first place.

By helping clinicians know which patients may be well enough to discharge, and which patients are deteriorating and need attention before their condition becomes more serious, VitalPAC both improves patient care, and saves precious hospital resources.

Managing Director at The Learning Clinic, Roger Killen says: "The VitalPAC system is a huge step forward for the NHS in the care of patients and the management of resources. Not only will it help ensure the safety of the patient, but it also promotes their timely progress through the tests and investigations that help the clinical teams make accurate diagnosis and treatment. The sooner the patient is on the right treatment, the sooner they recover. That's good for hospital efficiency and good for the patient."

Future developments

Under the system, which runs via the Windows Mobile 5.0 operating system, nurses enter key clinical data into hand-held computers at the bedside, rather than onto a traditional paper observation chart. VitalPAC immediately analyses these readings, along with data such as blood test results stored in other hospital databases, and identifies priority patients using an early warning score.

An urgent alert is given if the early warning score reveals the patient to be in need of immediate medical attention. All readings on VitalPAC are automatically sent via a wireless LAN to a central server. This means that the data can be reviewed on the hospital intranet, tablet PCs, or on other PDAs by any clinician anywhere in the hospital.

John Coulthard, Director of Healthcare for Microsoft UK comments: "These are exciting times for technology in the health sector and VitalPAC is a fantastic example of smart technology delivering tangible benefits to NHS staff and patients.

From the start, the requirements of clinical and nursing staff have been paramount and the result is a user-friendly system which has significantly improved the lives of frontline NHS staff and ultimately the patients they care for."

This is just the first step in the development of VitalPAC. The Learning Clinic and Microsoft are now working with Portsmouth Hospitals NHS trust to extend the technology to meet the specific needs of hospital doctors.

About Portsmouth Hospitals NHS trust: Portsmouth Hospitals NHS trust provides healthcare services for a population of 600,000 across three main hospital sites - Queen Alexandra Hospital, Portsmouth; St Mary's Hospital, Portsmouth; and Royal Hospital Haslar, Gosport.

About The Learning Clinic: Since its foundation in 2004, The Learning Clinic Ltd has developed and delivered an award-winning range of products which drive measurable improvements in healthcare.