Today the following press release was issued:
29 May 2020
New Technology Delivered to Care Homes to Support Better Clinical Monitoring
A pilot scheme which has helped care and nursing home residents avoid hospital admissions has been extended across Mid and South Essex Health and Care Partnership.
Through the five clinical commissioning groups in mid and south Essex the Partnership has invested in a new suite of technology for all care homes in the area for the next 12 months.
Called Whzan Digital Health, the technology will see each home supplied with a digital health kit, including blood pressure monitor, pulse oximeter, and a thermometer to support the NHS to provide clinical care for nursing and residential home residents.
Dr Donald McGeachy, GP and Medical Director Mid and South Essex Joint Commissioning Team (STP)
“This secure platform will help to improve the monitoring of clinical observations for people in care and nursing homes. We are training care home staff how to use the equipment and undertake the observations required. Alongside this we will be training clinicians that regularly visit care homes, including community paramedics, primary care staff and rapid response teams. The aim is to identify early deterioration in health which if not treated appropriately, could result in the resident needing to go to hospital.”
Whzan has a range of assessment tools that are used to capture photos for clinical assessment and record findings from Bluetooth medical instruments (for example temperature, blood oxygen levels, and blood pressure). Using a tablet, it reports to the Whzan Cloud triaging portal, where the information collected can support local clinicians such as GPs and community teams to monitor the health of care home residents remotely.
The Whzan system can raise alerts and shows a traffic light health status which helps care staff identify early signs of deterioration in health.
The clinical observations taken using the tablet provided are stored and can provide support to clinicians when undertaking online/video consultations.
This new technology will improve the quality of service that can be provided to our care home residents. Objective clinical measurements will allow clinicians to make safer decisions regarding what care is most appropriate for this group of patients who often have complex health needs.
Anthony McKeever, Interim Joint Accountable Officer for the mid and south Essex CCGs said: “This health monitoring technology has already been piloted within the local healthcare system with excellent results so we are pleased to be able to offer this package of support to all care homes in our area as a further pilot for the next year.”
Keith Chessell, CEO of Isle of Wight based Whzan said “This is impressive action by the NHS to rollout new technology at speed and scale to improve the safety and healthcare of over 9,000 elderly people at higher risk of illness. It has been our privilege to support them with their programme”.
The timeframe for mobilisation of the Whzan equipment is the beginning of June 2020, with complete roll out finishing in mid-July 2020.