Kenyan engineers build system to reduce nurse induced ‘killings’

For many years and in many hospitals this side of the deaths happen when a nurse leaves the inpatient ward, full of invalids to go get more supplies or check on other patients in the next wards or just lazy to attend to their patients.

Many hospitals have been working hard to reduce communication challenges and improve nursing workflows. Whether it’s locating a nurse, or responding to a patient’s request for more pain medication in-realtime— it has been notoriously time-consuming and difficult to streamline these workflows leading to deaths which could be averted if a patient was given their jab on time.

However, speaking to TechMoran, Jones Kubai, from Royal World Technologies, the engineers behind the system said, “One of the approaches to resolving this is through the implementation of a unified nurse calling system. This solution offers a way for nurses and patients to interact, and for nurses to get real-time notification on patient status and respond to patient requests.”

Let’s call it the Protektor II, the Nurse Call System has a ward bed ID for each patient and the nurse can use it to call drugs from the store or other medical facilities, can be used to call for emergency or any service call or track anything going on inside the wards. It can also be connected to other machines in the hospital attending to various patients through a dedicated backbone bus fully scalable for large buildings.

“Protektor nurse calls allow the flexibility to include wireless receivers for mobile alarm location, door monitors, and bed exit  monitor,”says Kubai. “”It can have door monitor strips for wandering prevention, wristband alarm transmitter on a patient, processors and receivers for mobile alarm location, nurse call database with site mimic and universal POCSAG controller for pagers and floor displays.

Kubai tells TechMoran that this Wireless Nurse call system will send alert to gain immediate help in an Emergency or Normal attendance, and is designed for the need better service for caregiver service in hospitals.

To be certain how the systems works, they have installed one of its kind at St. Theresa Mission Hospital Kiirua in MERU County and the second installation phase will see 28 beds connected.

We just thought you have an idea or two on how they can further build this everywhere. Royal World Tech are healthcare and security systems engineers.

Basic components, according to Kubai are a main panel for the system like a switchboard, a floor controller junction for each floor, a wired multi-colored light junction unit  and a wireless call point with for emergency calls, nurse presences, guard and reset button. It also has wireless call points for toilets and bathrooms, a nurse call extension and an intercom care station according to techmoran.com.