Rodwell House in Surrey, part of the Graham Care group of care homes, celebrate successful integration of medicines administration and electronic care planning applications from Person Centred Software and Invatech Health. The integration means that data from Invatech Health’s ATLAS electronic medicines management system (eMAR) is shared with Person Centred Software’s electronic care planning system, Mobile Care Monitoring. For care home staff this allows the ability to view the entirety of residents’ care including medicines administrations in one place.
Medication evidenced in Invatech Health’s ATLAS eMAR automatically appears as a care record within Person Centred Software’s Mobile Care Monitoring system providing an integrated record of care provided and meds administered in Mobile Care Monitoring. Combining the platforms ensures critical information will be available when needed and empowers care home staff to understand prescribing and issuing patterns, and ultimately minimise errors. The shared platform also strengthens the partnerships between care homes, GPs and pharmacies, allowing for better integration and collaboration. The amalgamation of care and medicines data could also lead to intelligent ways to detect patterns in the data that could predict care outcomes and establish early interventions. Both companies have projects investigating the potential use of the big data that is available and which now provides further context for the care of the resident.
Care homes will continue to use Mobile Care Monitoring and ATLAS eMAR on devices specifically designed and architected for the respective tasks. This is also consistent with the practice of having dedicated staff members for administering medicines. The care home who is the data controller, then has the option of sharing data through a safe and secure process. This means that the mechanisms for integration is very simple and puts the care home in total control.
Commercially the care homes engage with Person Centred Software and ATLAS eMAR directly, but they can choose to have a joint implementation plan.
Ernie Graham, Owner of Graham Care says, “In a care home environment, there is a mass of data and the challenge is to combine the data together to make sense of and predict where errors and risks are. With the integration between our eMAR and electronic care planning providers, Invatech Health and Person Centred Software, we can analyse the combined data well and predict where risks are and amend care plans to keep people well.”
Andrew Coles, Head of Product Management at Person Centred Software says, “Care providers are seeing the benefits of reducing risks using electronic systems. Many are now on a digital journey, whether they started with eMAR or electronic care planning, and we are joining them together to magnify the benefits of both solutions. Our system is a central repository for data and by working with best of breed solutions we enable care homes to use ecosystem of technology to improve outcomes and demonstrate quality of care efficiently to regulatory inspectors.”
Sajid Ramzan, Director of Sales at ATLAS eMAR says “Our joint customers can simply switch on the integration option with no change to their day to day practice. New customers now have a choice of choosing the best electronic care planning system and the best eMAR for their unique needs, knowing that the data can be shared easily.”
Case study:
Ernie Graham owns Cornford House near Tunbridge Wells and is one of the first to benefit from this software collaboration.
Ernie says, “Providing care is complex and multi-faceted. Over the years, we have learnt that the best technology is provided by companies who are specialists in a specific aspect of care. For example, we have a specialist staff rostering system and a different call bell system. For medicine management, we chose the ATLAS eMAR, a specialist product from a company run by experts who are pharmacists and doctors.
“More recently we moved to Person Centred Software due its modern mobile handheld system. It was a big decision to change but one of the main things was because of their technical and open architecture. The company has considerable expertise which they have transferred through several years of developing the software. The Mobile Care Monitoring application uses mobile devices to evidence care. It is very visual, easy to use and it saves a lot of time.”
Ernie adds, “We see a strong case for integration and inter-operability. We have been marketed with ‘one stop solutions’ but don’t want to be limited as to the technology. We want to work with real in-depth specialists, with the analytics undertaken by each provider. And we want to work with the ‘best in class’ in each specialism of care and then apply the analytics from each to combine outcomes and mitigate risk, with all the data available in one place.”
