New technology brought in to speed up patient care at Dewsbury and District Hospital

Staff at Mid Yorkshire Hospitals Trust are being trained on the hand-held system VitalPAC, which monitors patients’ vital signs and sends alerts to doctors if their condition worsens.

The wireless system is already in use at Dewsbury and will be introduced at Pinderfields and Pontefract hospitals in the autumn.

Sister Kirstie McEnhill, VitalPAC clinical lead nurse at Mid Yorkshire, said: “The new VitalPAC system is set to be a huge boost for healthcare in the region.

“Its technology is introducing a new level of efficiency to the service.

“When fully implemented it will allow for far faster treatment of patients whose condition is deteriorating.”

Nurses can record seven routine observations on the new technology, which uses software to immediately analyse pulse, temperature and other readings.

VitalPAC then checks the results against information like blood tests stored in other hospital databases to calculate an early warning score for the patient.

All readings taken on the system are automatically sent to a central server.

The data can then be checked on the hospital’s internal internet, or on mobile tablets or computers anywhere in the hospital.

Mid Yorkshire said the final stage of the implementation of VitalPAC would see doctors receive an alert if data reveals the patient is in urgent need of medical attention.