Paperless anaesthetic system arrives at Salford Royal

Published: 18-Mar-2019

GE Healthcare's Centricity High Acuity Anaesthesia information management solution rolled out

The anaesthetics department at Salford Royal Hospital is going fully digital, following the recent installation of world-class technology.

Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust, part of the Northern Care Alliance (NCA) NHS Group, has deployed GE Healthcare’s Centricity High Acuity Anaesthesia (CHA-A) Information Management Solution - known by clinicians as ‘CHAAS’.

As a Global Digital Exemplar (GDE) organisation, Salford Royal is improving patient outcomes by automatically collecting data from medical devices at each stage of care: from preoperative assessment; during surgery in the operating room; through to the post-anaesthesia recovery unit.

This full and detailed picture of the patient will enable clinicians to make informed decisions in real time and has the potential to improve clinical outcomes.

The new system aims to improve patient safety and help the department be more efficient by reducing the number of paper documents that need to be scanned by the trust’s bureau on a daily basis. Furthermore, raw data collected by the system, rather than image scans of paper documents, will enable data interrogation and searches for a richer depth of physiological and surgical information for patient care planning and research purposes.

“Patient safety is central to everything we do in the healthcare profession”, said Dr John Large, consultant Aanaesthetist at Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust.

“Full digitisation of the patient journey in peri-operative care will ensure that everything is recorded correctly, in order to fully support clinical decision making.

“We have over 26,000 theatre episodes per year in our 22 theatres – some for more than 12 hours, high-risk surgery, and others which are 20-minute routine procedures. By having a system that records all information in real time means the focus of an anaesthetist is firmly on the patient, not on recording detailed data. This delivers great efficiencies and is also better for the patient.”

Chris Russell, product segment leader for high acuity care at GE Healthcare, added: “We are pleased to be partnering with Salford Royal, helping the team to realise all the potential benefits that a state-of the-art IT system such as the GE Centricity solution can bring.

“It will benefit not only the patients, but also the individuals and clinical teams that make up our NHS; enhancing, even further, the excellent care the teams already provide on a daily basis.”

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