Bringing together unconnected data to improve patient care
Delays in admission to hospital emergency departments are an ongoing issue in the healthcare system, caused mainly by long wait times for patient services in other parts of the hospital. In order to accommodate the increasing number of patients waiting in emergency departments, hospitals resort to opening up unfunded beds, putting patients on stretchers in hallways or cancelling elective surgeries to make more beds available.
Oculys Health Informatics has developed a solution that provides real-time updates, and connects teams and their leaders to important operational information. Called Oculys Performance, this advancement in technology in the hospital setting streamlines communication and data in the area of patient care, improving overall operational efficiencies and reducing length of stay.
The project provides real-time information about where inpatients are in their care journey and what remains to be done to prepare them for discharge.
“Ultimately this has helped reduce the length of stay so patients are able to get home sooner. This not only makes the discharged patient happier it also frees up the inpatient bed sooner for the next patient waiting in the emergency department,” says Don Shilton, President of St. Mary’s General Hospital.
Through the AdvancingHealth program, Oculys was able to implement stayTrack at St. Mary’s General Hospital to replace manual in-unit whiteboards, with large interactive screens to enhance communication, workflow and improve the patient care management and discharge process. It demonstrates how this technology can improve patient care through continuous updates and provision of relevant information to nursing staff and the patient.
“With the program, we were able to take a piece of technology and implement it into the target environment. Being able to showcase and test it, really showed its value to improving patient care and to Ontario’s healthcare sector,” says Franck Hivert, CEO of Oculys Health Informatics.
Making the right information available at the right time enabled clinicians to make better decisions and help patients move more effectively along their care journey to get them discharged faster, making another bed available and reducing wait time for the next patient. Demonstrating the new technology solution in the hospital setting showed its value in improving patient care. Oculys was able to commercialize the solution, and has sold the technology to four other hospitals in Ontario.
OCE now offers two programs aimed at advancing innovation in the health care system. The REACH program helps Ontario healthcare providers apply new methods to procure and more rapidly adopt innovative medical technologies that can address high priority health system needs and the Health Technologies Fund supports the development of made-in-Ontario health technologies by accelerating evaluation, procurement, adoption and diffusion in the Ontario health system.
