East Lancs picks ExtraMed to manage beds

East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust has signed a deal with Scottish business technology provider Amor Group and its partner ExtraMed for a bed management and whiteboard system.

The £160,000, four year deal will make it easier for staff to manage the allocation and occupancy of beds.

It will also deliver ExtraMed’s A&E whiteboard to the Royal Blackburn Hospital. This shows the location and status of patients and the availability of resources in A&E, and supports the four hour waiting time standard.

The trust has been piloting the system in order to meet bed management targets, having seen it in action at Royal Bolton Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.

John Goodenough, deputy director of nursing, said: “We piloted the ExtraMed Beds management solution with an aim of streamlining patient flow and enabling more effective communication within the organisation.

“The system helped us to achieve this objective and, as a result, we have now adopted a more comprehensive solution.”

The system captures up to date information on admissions, discharges, transfers and delays which is then shared across the trust so managers can more effectively deal with emergencies and discharges.

Alistair O’Brien, public sector business unit director at Amor Group, said: “Ultimately, it is designed to be flexible and to give NHS managers a comprehensive overview of capacity, patient requirements, bottlenecks and areas of performance that require attention.

“As well as making the patient’s experience more streamlined and faster, the ExtraMed solutions ensure that often-stretched resources are used most efficiently.”

ExtraMed is an Edinburgh-based company that produces bleep and infection control systems as well as ExtraMed Beds and the A&E Whiteboard.

The Amor Group is best known in the healthcare sector for providing technology and managed services including GP administration systems, practice and prescription management, and drug treatment control and business analysis support.

Last month, the company signalled a move into clinical systems by signing a deal with Golden Jubilee National Hospital in Scotland for a single records system for cardiac, thoracic and cardiology patients.