Case Study - Wythenshawe NHS

Datalogic GryphonTM Desk Handheld Reader Keeps NHS Case Study: Wythenshawe NHS Patient Records in Good Order. The Wythenshawe is a public hospital in Manchester, a University Hospital which is also part of the South Manchester NHS Foundation Trust. It's a major teaching hospital Trust providing services at Wythenshawe Hospital and Withington Community Hospital. The Trust is also a centre for education and research.

The Challenge: The old manual, paper-based process of entering patient details was very prone to error, which could cause problems further down the line. It was also timeconsuming and could take time for doctors and nurses to recall patient details and to refill prescriptions. NHS Public hospitals in the UK are charged with introducing new processes and supporting technologies to improve the patient care as well as reduce costs to ease the burden on general taxation.

The Solution: Staff at the hospital can now scan bar codes on the paper patient record, which then automatically brings up the entire patient’s electronic record. The equipment was specifically configured and fitted at the hospital by bar code IT specialists Kelgray.

Darren Wildman, sales manager for Kelgray, said “Wythenshawe had already storing all different sorts of notes and we wanted to help centralise these into one main record which can be brought up from any hospital location. We configured the bar code readers so that they would ensure that they pick up all keyboard data and marry it up with the central iPM system as appropriate.”

South Manchester used iSoft’s iPM PAS which tracks patients from admission to discharge. Martin Hobson, IT Infrastructure Project Manager explained: “The Wythenshawe Hospital uses bar code readers from Datalogic Scanning. Nurses, medical secretaries and other clinicians all use the readers connected to their PCs, to scan the bar codes on patient records, and this automatically brings up all of the patient’s electronic record, completely doing away with manual data entry of details.”

Hobson continued, “We chose Datalogic Scanning because of their excellent reputation and the resilience of the Gryphon Desk Readers. The readers have worked without any problems at all. Datalogic and its Quality Partner did an excelent job supporting us with the programming of the readers. We couldn’t have done it without them.” The Results Kelgray say that by improving the accuracy, availability and speed of collection of data hospitals can benefit from instant access to patient records, much faster throughput and traceability of items such as samples and x-rays and other assets.

“We chose Datalogic Scanning because of their very good reputation and the resilience of the Gryphon readers. The readers have worked without any problems at all. Datalogic and Kelgray did a fantastic job supporting us with the programming of the readers".

Standard Radio Systems

Advantages. Being based on a standard, barcode readers supplied by different manufacturers should be able to communicate with each other and therefore, can be combined and mixed. In theory the user could use barcode readers from different manufacturers for the same application. Over time as newer models are released and the user could replace old units or add new ones choosing the best offer he can obtain at that time.

Disadvantages:

• In reality this compatibility is quite rare. In fact, most of the suppliers offer “closed” solutions (ie devices that, although based on a standard radio, can only communicate with other components supplied by the same manufacturer) in order to satisfy the customer’s desire for a “plug & scan” solution.

• The typical disadvantage is that the standard has been normally specified for something else (ie a different kind of application and usage; it usually has not been optimised for the basic and simple needs of bar code readers). Furthermore, standards are never stable forever: continuous updates are always required to keep communications in line with the latest release.

The most common standard radio systems are:

Wi-Fi: This is normally used for high performance radio systems like WLAN, including laptops, PDAs, mobile computers, printers etc. Networking, high mobility and high data communication speeds are all key factors of this system.

• This standard was defined following the evolution of the traditional LAN adding mobility to the operators allowing them to have access to key business systems including the Internet via mobile scanning devices.

It is a powerful standard but it is too feature-rich for a “simple” barcode reader: it requires a powerful microprocessor, an operating system, high capacity batteries and is too expensive and too often over-engineered for standard bar code scanning applications. It uses the ISM band (Industrial, Scientific and Medical) centred at 2.4 GHz.

Bluetooth® Wireless Technology: It was initially designed to eliminate cables and to create a WPAN (Wireless Personal Area Network). Normally used for:

• Cordless communications at the operator’s desk
• Occasional WLAN access
• File sharing and synchronisation between devices such as PDAs, laptops and today's mobile phones 
• Wireless headsets for mobile phones or Internet use