Patient Safety with IM-Assist

InfoMedis has developed an entirely new system to provide safety to patients - for blood sampling, blood testing, blood bag assignemt and transfusion. It was designed at the Kantonsspital in St Gallen, Switzerland and tested with almost thousand patients. It comprised the complete process chain and was crossing borderlines between various different institutes inside the hospital, such as the nursing station, the operation theatre, the emergency entrance and the blood donation and test institue. The result was absolutely clear: no errors, and a really new system for process control.
 

The electronic patient and object identifikation with RFID and Barcode are key elements. Every patient receives a wrist band with the according RFID chip. This chip is still readable when the patient is unconcious in the operation theatre. During the test not only the blood bags for transfusion were identified but also simple operation documents with a barcode. This means that extension to various other applications which require process control, such as assigning pharmaceuticals to patients, are possible. The process control always requires simple reader devices, barcode and rfid tags and of course the according IM-Assist software.
 

IM-Assist functions like a security layer between object and IT-level. It provides a complete logging of all actions performed with the patient. The existing IT-Infrastructure does not need to be changed. This means a very cost effective integration of the system.

During the test perid almost all patients valued the wristband as a contribution to their personal safety. And the staff personal sees it as a valuable electronic assistance within their demanding work day.