E.care is celebrating its 10th birthday in December 2010.
However, we should not rest on our laurels just yet. The care process and the view on the workflow – in both the emergency ward and the OR – are constantly changing. Furthermore, technology is subject to evolution too. Not only does this create new possibilities for the E.care software itself; but the perfect integration with the leading, overarching applications and other vertical practices becomes possible in more and more hospitals as well. The "Best of Breed" dream is coming true.
Version 2.0: The next step for E.care ED
E.care Ed has earned a reputation of stabile and functionally complete software. Every year, at least 1 version was released in which (visible and invisible) corrections were made.
In the mean time we kept a finger on the pulse and we tried to get to the bottom of the users' big dreams: what kind of function could improve the quality of the care process even more?
At the same time the software was screened by external, freelance consultants who pointed out the possible improvements and who especially helped to prepare the transition to the technology of 2015.
You will be able to get to know the result this autumn: E.care ED 2.0 is on its way.
E.care ED 2.0: functional growth
Time line
Although the clinical documentation was as extensive as possible in the previous version, there was still a great call for one big overview of the entire care process. Indeed, the cockpit screen offers an outline of the actions that are going on at that moment (who is doing what NOW) but in order to get an overview of the history and planned activities, different tabs or a document / report had to be consulted hitherto. Moreover the demand for a time line became increasingly louder, especially for patients who needed to stay in the ward for more than 4 hours.
The answer to all these problems is "the time line": one tab in which all other tabs are displayed graphically, on a horizontal time line (investigations, medication, lab, tasks, ...)
Next to an overview of the history and the future actions, this tab make it possible as well to – on the basis of the time line – register the execution of the actions, prescribe them or alter them.
Regarding the medication, a functional extension for infusions was built in: now the registration of the volume, location of the infusion, composition of the infusions etc. can be done as well.
Outflow management
Even though the intake of patients was already nicely arranged thanks to the application of a triage method (MTS, ESI, NTS, ...), the new version E.care 2.0 also pays attention to the outflow management: a function was added to the basic screen, that enables communication with the admission planning on the one hand and on the other hand notifies the employees of the emergency ward (or SHE) themselves of priority tasks in order to promote the quick admission of patients. If a patient – after he has been attended to and his diagnosis has been made –has to be hospitalized, the admission planning is asked to find him a bed as soon as possible. At the same time, the staff of the ward is urged through the cockpit screen to complete the care and administrative process, so the patient can leave the ward.
E.care ED 2.0: optimized application management
In version 2.0 a lot of time and energy was spent on an additional function regarding importing and exporting data. The automatic import and sync function is time-saving and in a very simple way makes sure that the basic files remain synchronized with the maternal files (which come from different applications):
The administrator gets an overview of the modifications and can implement them if relevant.
The application managers of our test hospitals are very excited and say that they can indeed save a lot of time.
If we could only simplify the work of our employees and of the application managers, we would already have succeeded in part of our task. We further hope that version 2.0 will act as a new platform, on the basis of which we, our partners and our clients can grow towards what we all consider to be ideal.