Much to our dismay, we have experienced a major turn of events in our project. The company that was previously supplying us with a sensing technology has decided to change direction and will no longer be a part of our project. Despite this setback, we still see an opportunity to meet the original needs of the NICU. The Vanderbilt NICU came to us with a need for real-time tracking of patients, equipment, and staff in order to optimize workflow. Originally, we determined that a display system used by physicians and nurses would alleviate any issues they were having with daily operations.
Through shadowing physicians, we have developed an understanding of the specific needs of the NICU. For example, twice a day there is an organizational meeting between the outgoing and incoming staff. At this time, the two charge nurses must sit and discuss patient location, status, and potential movements throughout the next shift. The charge nurses accomplish this through written charts and word of mouth, causing this meeting to take much longer than needed. For example, time is taken to identify where a particular baby is because they have to rely on their memory or what they’ve written down throughout the previous shift. We believe an electronic display system would expedite this process, contain more detailed information about the patients, and reduce the potential for transcription errors.
Currently, a real-time position sensing program exists in other areas of the hospital. AeroScout, the company that provides the technology, is open to the opportunity to implement their system in the NICU. The technology operates throughout the hospital to track equipment in real-time. The tracking system employs a sensing tag and wifi so the system could be used for patient tracking as well. There are plans in place to bring the technology to the NICU, however, its sole purpose is to make sure patients are not taken from designated zones without authority. While this functionality does not meet the specific need of the NICU that we have identified, we believe the technology has the capability to do so. Our new goal is to optimize the implementation of the AeroScout system so that it meets the unique needs of the Vanderbilt NICU. For example, the neonatologists have identified needs, such as color coding teams, that are specific to the Vanderbilt NICU’s operations. Due to our shadowing experience, we have begun compiling the potential customizations to the AeroScout technology that would benefit this NICU specifically. This would allow us to give recommendations and suggestions to AeroScout both to create a smoother implementation and optimize the use of the system in the NICU.
Our next steps involve meeting with David Cochran, the healthcare consultant for the Vanderbilt hospital. We hope to get comfortable with the AeroScout interface, MobileView, to better understand its functionality. Therefore, we are looking to getting an inservice set up with AeroScout so we, and our neonatologist advisors, Dr. Walsh and Dr. Grubb, can learn how to operate the technology as well as the limits of its capabilities. In the meantime, we are continuing shadowing to gather information about the current processes in the NICU that the technology will be affecting. We also want to continue compiling the list of inefficiencies in the NICU to determine the areas AeroScout can address.