North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Hospital Foundation Trust has congratulated the winner of the Health Service Journal ‘Best HealthTech Solution for Patient Safety’ Award after being nominated in the same category for our CareScan+ project.
The Trust’s CareScan+ project, an innovative system which uses barcodes and hand-held scanners to identify patients and equipment, was shortlisted for the award but sadly lost out to nearby County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust.
CareScan+ was developed by the Trust’s in-house Information Communication and Technology team. It has proven vital during the COVID-19 pandemic as a means of assessing and allocating non-invasive, mobile ventilators.
Due to restrictions on social gathering the awards ceremony, which recognised various initiatives in health care, was held online today.
Tony Naylor, Associate Director for ICT, said: “We’re disappointed but genuinely, just being nominated is a huge honour.
“We worked really hard to get CareScan+ up and running. But we couldn’t have done it without the buy-in and support of the senior management team and the work of dozens of colleagues.
“Thank you to everyone who helped us.”
Anthony Kennerley, CareScan+ Project Manager, said: “Congratulations to County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust.
“We’ll still be rolling out CareScan+ to the wider Trust soon. And I’m sure our colleagues will soon begin to see how revolutionary the system really is.”
About CareScan+
CareScan+ was trialled in late 2019. It is used by clinical staff to scan items, such as replacement hip and knee joints, prior to being used in the operating theatre.
CareScan+ maintains a record of surgical implants used for re-order purposes. The system can also provide decision support by raising warnings to the person scanning the item.
For example, the handset will inform the user if the item is out of date or if another aspect of its use needs to be checked beforehand.
When using CareScan+ to scan surgical implants, the items are traced much more quickly than they could in the past. So in the unlikely but possible event of a manufacturer’s recall, every patient who has received the recalled product can be identified within minutes so that any necessary review and follow-up is arranged much sooner.
CareScan+ ensures comprehensive details of all implanted patient devices are captured quickly and reliably. It complies with a key element of the 2020 First Do No Harm: Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review.
In June this year, CareScan+ won at the Health Tech Newspaper Awards in the “Supporting Healthcare Teams” category.