Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise has published a white paper on optimising the care pathway for better outcomes in hospitals.

In the paper, we outline the current situation in digital health and map out a vision to free up time for patient care.

The widespread implementation of EMRs has allowed collaboration between doctors, reduced medical errors, and created the data points required for analytics which will provide an in-road for artificial intelligence work in the future.

However, attention has shifted from the patient to the EMR system, with nurses spending 20-40% of their time on the EMR platform.

Also, nurses’ walking distance and walking time have increased by approximately 15 to 18% per shift, and the uptake in the number of medical devices connected to patients has led to nurses spending 10-14% of their time searching for people and equipment.

As hospitals become more automated, with the addition of digital tools and food delivery robots, patient expectations are increasingly creating a new issue of alarm fatigue for nursing staff.

To solve these problems, we are calling for more mobility, the integration of siloes, enabling process improvements, and closing the loop with patients by providing them with more options.

Dirk Dumortier, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise’s head of business development healthcare and smart city, Asia-Pacific, says: “Digital transformation is about helping hospital staff execute their functions, by digitalising or automating repeatable menial tasks. However, research and feedback from the nursing teams today, indicate the current generation of digital tools has increased workloads, resulting in a reduction in patient care time and contributing to the increased burnout rate of nurses. Addressing this situation requires a holistic approach.”

Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise’s vision for addressing nursing teams’ challenges is based on three digital transformation streams: digital patient engagement, nurse digital workplace, and digital age networking/communications.

Find out more about these streams here.