Bluewire Technologies took on two students under the Shell Step Scheme during their break from University in August and September. The Shell Step scheme is a UK wide programme offering undergraduates project-based work within SME's. It benefits students by helping to develop their commercial skills, giving them a clear insight in to the world beyond the lecture theatre. It benefits companies too by providing enthusiastic, additional resources to conduct the sort of special projects that can otherwise seem to mount up.

This summer Bluewire enjoyed the company of Tom Dixon studying Computer Science at Sheffield University and Sofian Otmani, a Masters Computer Science student from Bristol.

Tom's project saw him working on the new barcode reading interface between our epro software and the cutting edge Motion C5 Tablet PC. This very important project aimed to provide reliable patient identification functionality needed to prevent the sort of patient mismatching and resulting medication errors which all too often hit the headlines. He met his brief in less than the eight week period so was able to go on to add new functionality such as capture of clinical photographs.

"I was keen to get some hands on work experience in a software company to compliment my university studies and improve my employability on graduation," said Tom, "It's been an enjoyable experience and a worthwhile placement. Being part of a small team meant that the work and projects I completed, made a real contribution to the company's product development."

Tom Dixon(centre) presenting his solution enhancement completed project to Andrew Toal of Motion Computing Ltd (right) under the guidance of Bluewire's MD, Adam Towler (left)

Whilst it might seem that Tom had the glamorous project working with the latest devices, Sofian was involved with some vital work on our server component, integrating with the latest Microsoft Word technologies. All our word and pdf documents are now generated on our servers using his work, which brings significant reliability and speed improvements benefiting our users.

Adam Towler, Bluewire MD commented, "We have always had good links with Bristol University and the Shell Step scheme is excellent for pairing companies with students and offering a structured framework for doing so. There are many academically gifted students, but real industrial experience is just as important and gives them valuable perspective on their university studies. Sofian and Tom undertook an eight week programme researching a new market for us, interviewing clients and then building a software module giving them a taste of a wide range of skills."

To find out more about Shell Step Programme visit: http://www.step.org.uk

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Almost 25,000 hospital patients were the victims of reported medical errors in 2006, leading to death or serious injury in some cases.

The National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) which revealed the figures has issued guidelines for new wristbands after more than 2,900 of these errors were attributed to patient mistaken identity. The NPSA have recognised the important part that technology can play in ensuring that patient identities are not confused. In time, the present diversity of wristbands in use throughout the health service will become standardized, but Bluewire Technologies are ahead of the game by providing barcode reading technology capable of reading different types of bar coded wristbands now.

With simply a scan of the barcode reader, Bluewire's Epro software loads the correct patient data to the PC screen, or mobile device. No transcription errors, no misreading of handwritten names and no mixed up digits.

Together with the NPSA's guidelines for the manual checking of patient identity, Bluewire Technologies are helping to ensure that the right patient always receives the right medicine and that patient mismatching errors will be consigned to history.

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The future is mobile! In recognition of the huge increase in demand for truly mobile PCs and the obvious practicalities these present in the patient care environment, Bluewire have remodelled our clinical data management applications to be fully compatible with the very latest, Medical Clinical Assistant (MCA) …the Motion C5 tablet PC.

Busy health care professionals now have the freedom and flexibility to use our Epro software whenever and wherever they want. Using our inherently flexible software together with the C5 means that, patient identification, clinical documentation, manually written notes and diagrams plus prescribing, picture taking and dictation can all be performed wirelessly with one device.

Designed specially for near patient environments, the C5 is a completely sealed unit to enable appropriate disinfection.

The future is mobile… and with Bluewire you can go there today.

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Working closely with NHS hospital staff, Bluewire has just completed a successful trial of its new e-TTO ( “to take out”) solution. This innovative new application will provide significant patient and staff benefits. Ward staff know when a TTO is ready, patients can go home more quickly after discharge, meaning beds are not needlessly blocked and administrators can audit this important part of the discharge process.

Using the ward PC or a mobile tablet PC, the clinician accesses the patient record and enters the prescription onto the customisable TTO form. Discharge drugs are selected from either a full drugs database or pharmacy approved, customised, hospital formulary pick list. The completed e-TTO prescription form is accessed in the pharmacy department where the status of the supply is added e.g.'Checked by Pharmacy, 'Ready to collect' etc and any problems with the prescription can be advised e.g. 'wrong dose', 'unavailable'.

All prescriptions and amendments are retained to provide a viewable prescription audit.

As well as the obvious time and cost saving benefits, patient safety is also improved … there are no prescription errors due to ambiguous handwriting with this bang up to date TTO prescription process.

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