Great Ormond Street trials iPads

Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Trust is piloting the use of iPads for e-prescribing.

The trust became the first paediatric hospital in the UK to complete the roll out of an electronic prescribing and medicines management system in October 2009.

It is now trialling the use of five iPads for e-prescribing on Victoria ward, which specialises in renal medicine, with a view to a wider roll out.

The move is one of a number of initiatives that the trust has been able to progress because of a major investment in its IT and wireless infrastructure over the past two years.

Director of ICT Marc Large told E-Health Insider reporter Sarah Bruce that it was also looking to make more use of video to connect clinicians working on different part of its site and to put patients in touch with relatives staying in the patient hotel.

However, on an EHI visit to the trust, he said he was most excited by a pilot of AeroScout’s asset tracking system, which has the potential to dramatically reduce the amount of time staff spend looking for missing equipment.

The new wireless network from Cisco was specifically built with asset tracking in mind. The iPad pilot will investigate network, security and workload issues.

However, Large said he was keen for clinicians to be able to work with the devices they wanted to work with.

Read more about EHI’s visit to Great Ormond Street in opinion and analysis.