Dr. Brendan Murphy:

In both primary care and the acute setting, this is where some systems have failed because the system needs to be designed so that the healthcare professional is not spending all their time at the computer, instead of with the patient. That has certainly been a criticism in North America. I am sure we have all read about that. What we have tried to do is to design systems that enable real-time documentation. I can give the example of the neo-natal intensive care, where nursing staff are documenting and using the systems to take the measurements from the monitors and the ventilators in real time, and are validating them, as opposed to having to manually transcribe. The data is probably more accurate, more structured for interrogation later and it also takes time away from manual transcription for the nursing staff. We worked out that nursing staff were saving in the region of 45 minutes per shift, which translates over time. More strongly than that, our nursing staff love it because it frees them up to deal with their patient at the bedside, and also, they get home on time. They are not spending an hour at the end of their shift retrospectively writing notes.