East Kent Hospitals adopt Fully Connected Glucose Solution to enhance Patient Safety at Point of Care

East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust recently installed 224 wireless-enabled Roche Accu-Chek® Inform II blood glucose meters in 130 point of care (POC) locations across seven hospital sites.  Linked to the cobas® IT 1000 POC data management package, this fully connected glucose testing solution from Roche enhances patient safety by helping to ensure appropriate use of the meters and by providing a full audit trail for every test performed.

“With over 3,000 users across seven sites, implementation was challenging from a scale point of view but, thanks to the support we had from Roche, everything went smoothly,” commented POCT Coordinator, Phil Bates.

The content of the training delivered by the Roche Training Specialist at East Kent Hospitals was agreed with the POCT Coordinator, providing assurance of appropriate, site-specific and consistent training for all staff.  Once trained, user identifications and barcodes are activated and only then can users access the Accu-Chek Inform II meters to test patient samples.

“cobas IT 1000 allows me to monitor safe and appropriate use of the equipment,” Phil said.  “I can see at a glance who is trained and who is coming up for recertification, and I can target areas within the Trust where additional training might be required, with evidence to back this up.”

“Connectivity to cobas IT 1000 provides a full audit trail in far greater detail than has been possible before.  It also helps us to ensure quality control is being performed on every instrument on a daily basis. The system also generates a warning when there is an abnormal result, which prompts the user to take action.” Phil concluded.

“The recently published National Diabetes Inpatient Audit, reported that out-of-target glucose levels (high and low) are not being recognised or addressed, leading to serious complications”, said Peter Jones, Marketing Manager Hospital IVD, Roche. “Through our fully connected blood glucose solution, the point of care team at East Kent is able to monitor such out-of-target results via cobas IT 1000 and, in the near future, they hope to be able to flag this vital information directly to clinicians by linking to the Hospital Information System.”