Design and evaluation of a service oriented architecture for paperless ICU tarification

Effectiveness of Digital Technologies to Support Nursing Care: Results of a Scoping Review

Background

The field of digital technologies being developed or applied to support nursing care is extensive. The aim of this scoping review is to provide an overview on technologies for which results on positive or negative effects on persons in need of care, caregivers or care institutions are available and to appraise the reliability of these results.

Methods

A scoping review design has been used to identify studies focussing on the effectiveness of digital technologies in nursing care for persons in need of care, caregivers or care institutions. The screening process included 19,510 scientific publications from 9 databases.

Results

A total of 123 single studies and 31 reviews were subjected to the analysis. The included technologies comprise nursing and health information technologies, such as assistive devices, information and communication technologies, sensors and robotics. The results show that there are many studies that demonstrate positive effects, but the level of evidence is mostly low and study sizes are often small. Hardly any technology has been researched intensively enough to produce conclusive results. Studies on a high level of evidence (RCTs) lack for most technological areas. Heterogeneous results in some areas indicate that effects may depend strongly on the mode and specific context into which the technologies are introduced.

Conclusion

Due to the limited evidence on effectiveness of digital technologies in nursing care, it is not surprising that care institutions are reluctant to put innovative technologies into practice. The scoping review indicates technology areas that should be subject to future research with higher quality studies. Research on outpatient, informal and cross-sectoral care should be intensified to further exploit the potential of digital technologies with a view to improving independence of care-recipients and unburdening formal and informal carers.

Fully automated life support: an implementation and feasibility pilot study in healthy pigs

Background

Automated systems are available in various application areas all over the world for the purpose of reducing workload and increasing safety. However, such support systems that would aid caregivers are still lacking in the medical sector. With respect to workload and safety, especially, the intensive care unit appears to be an important and challenging application field. Whereas many closed-loop subsystems for single applications already exist, no comprehensive system covering multiple therapeutic aspects and interactions is available yet. This paper describes a fully closed-loop intensive care therapy and presents a feasibility analysis performed in three healthy pigs over a period of 72 h each to demonstrate the technical and practical implementation of automated intensive care therapy.

Methods

The study was performed in three healthy, female German Landrace pigs under general anesthesia with endotracheal intubation. An arterial and a central venous line were implemented, and a suprapubic urinary catheter was inserted. Electrolytes, glucose levels, acid-base balance, and respiratory management were completely controlled by an automated fuzzy logic system based on individual targets. Fluid management by adaption of the respective infusion rates for the individual parameters was included.

Results

During the study, no manual modification of the device settings was allowed or required. Homoeostasis in all animals was kept stable during the entire observation period. All remote-controlled parameters were maintained within physiological ranges for most of the time (free arterial calcium 73%, glucose 98%, arterial base excess 89%, and etCO₂ 98%). Subsystem interaction was analyzed.

Conclusions

In the presented study, we demonstrate the feasibility of a fully closed-loop system, for which we collected high-resolution data on the interaction and response of the different subsystems. Further studies should use big data approaches to analyze and investigate the interactions between the subsystems in more detail.

The effect of nursing participation in the design of a critical care information system: a case study in a Chinese hospital

Background

Intensive care information systems (ICIS) are continuously evolving to meet the ever changing information needs of intensive care units (ICUs), providing the backbone for a safe, intelligent and efficient patient care environment. Although beneficial for the international advancement in building smart environments to transform ICU services, knowledge about the contemporary development of ICIS worldwide, their usage and impacts is limited. This study aimed to fill this knowledge gap by researching the development and implementation of an ICIS in a Chinese hospital, nurses’ use of the system, and the impact of system use on critical care nursing processes and outcomes.

Methods

This descriptive case study was conducted in a 14-bed Respiratory ICU in a tertiary hospital in Beijing. Participative design was the method used for ICU nurses, hospital IT department and a software company to collaboratively research and develop the ICIS. Focus group discussions were conducted to understand the subjective perceptions of the nurses toward the ICIS. Nursing documentation time and quality were compared before and after system implementation. ICU nursing performance was extracted from the annual nursing performance data collected by the hospital.

Results

A participative design process was followed by the nurses in the ICU, the hospital IT staff and the software engineers in the company to develop and implement a highly useful ICIS. Nursing documentation was fully digitized and was significantly improved in quality and efficiency. The wrong data, missing data items and calculation errors were significantly reduced. Nurses spent more time on direct patient care after the introduction of the ICIS. The accuracy and efficiency of medication administration was also improved. The outcome was improvement in ward nursing performance as measured by ward management, routine nursing practices, disinfection and isolation, infection rate and mortality rate.

Conclusions

Nurses in this ICU unit in China actively participated in the ICIS development and fully used the system to document care. Introduction of the ICIS led to significant improvement in quality and efficiency in nursing documentation, medication order transcription and administration. It allowed nurses to spend more time with patients to improve quality of care. These led to improvement in overall nursing performance. Further study should investigate how the ICIS system contributes to the improvement in decision making of ICU nurses and intensivists.

Intensive care information system impacts

Introduction:

Today, intensive care needs to be increased with a prospect of an aging population and socioeconomic factors influencing health intervention, but there are some problems in the intensive care environments, it is essential to resolve. The intensive Care information system has the potential to solve many of ICU problems. The objective of the review was to establish the impact of intensive care information systems on the practitioners practice, patient outcomes and ICU performance.

Methods:

Scientific databases and electronic journal citations was searched to identify articles that discussed the impacts of intensive care information system on the practices, patient outcomes and ICU performance. A total of 22 articles discussing ICIS outcomes was included in this study from 609 articles initially obtained from the searches.

Results:

Pooling data across studies, we found that the median impact of ICIS on information management was 48.7%. The median impact of ICIS on user’ outcomes was 36.4%, impact on saving tips by 24%, clinical decision support by a mean of 22.7%, clinical outcomes improved by a mean of 18.6%, and researches improved by 18%.

Conclusion:

The functionalities of ICIS are growing day by day and new functionalities are available with every major release. Better adoption of ICIS by the intensive care environments emphasizes the opportunity of better intensive care services through patient oriented intensive care clinical information systems. There is an immense need for developing guidelines for standardizing ICIS to to maximize the power of ICISs and to integrate with HISs. This will enable intensivists to use the systems in a more meaningful way for better patient care. This study provides a better understanding and greater insight into the effectiveness of ICIS in improving patient care and reducing health care expenses.