Workflow solutions can keep you healthy
Jinfo Blog

By Joanna Ptolomey

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In healthcare we talk a lot about the patient journey. It is a journey – physically and mentally – for all stakeholders including the patient. It can be long and arduous and very rarely a sprint. The volume of information that is not only required, but also created, for each stage on the journey is also astounding. Healthcare is an information driven process.

It may be called a patient journey, however it really is just a process. If you have ever been involved in healthcare as a provider, supplier, professional worker or a patient then you will probably feel the process. There are departments that provide admin such as patient records,  interventions such as pharmacy and operating theatres, support for clinical decision-making such as laboratories (internal and external) and immediate professional care teams (doctors, nurses, physiotherapists etc).

Healthcare has in the past got a bad rap for being an inefficient process with financial implications and, of course, there are the front page news reports when errors in healthcare are reported. Healthcare is a complicated process and as such has been one of the industries that has embraced workflow technologies with the promise of improved efficiencies for all stakeholders, patient satisfaction and reduced errors.

A recurring news story in healthcare is hospital acquired infections (HAI). When you go into hospital for treatment for an acute or long-term condition you don’t expect to come home sicker with a different type of condition that required hospitalisation in the first place.  For example you may have heard of MRSA – a common hospital acquired infection.

A new clinical workflow solution has been released by Thomson Reuters called Clinical Xpert Solution Workflow. The product is a dashboard that helps professional clinical staff manage and reduce HAIs by combining three critical elements – real-time clinical surveillance, comprehensive patient data and specific Micromedex reference content (evidence-based reference content relating to HAI).

Leaving hospital well is a high priority for the patient but also the healthcare provider. Making sure that the patient journey is as safe and efficient as it can be is a well-run workflow process. Having information at the point of need is crucial to better health outcomes.  

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