Medusa Medical Technologies Inc. (Medusa) announced that its flagship electronic patient care reporting software, the Siren ePCR(TM) Suite, is currently being implemented in a pilot program for ground ambulances operated by Emergency Health Services Nova Scotia (EHS). Upon completion of the pilot program, the Siren ePCR Suite will be in all 150 of EHS’ ground ambulances, as well as in both LifeFlight air ambulances, and more than 800 paramedics will have been trained by EHS to use the system.
The Siren ePCR(TM) Suite is an electronic patient care reporting system that improves the speed and accuracy with which paramedics can record patient information while in an ambulance en route to hospital. With the system, patient data is recorded quicker and more accurately than with pencil and paper. Ultimately, Siren allows paramedics to spend less time documenting patients’ ailments, and more time treating them. The user-friendliness of Siren has resulted in high rates of acceptance from paramedics. After participating in the pilot program, Peter Cholock, an EHS paramedic, told Medusa that “Siren has been received more positively than I could have ever imagined.”
Adds Chris d’Entremont, Minister of Health, “Good patient care requires good information. This new system will help paramedics track a patient’s condition and treatment decisions quicker and more accurately, allowing paramedics to focus more time on patient care.”
Medusa’s contract with EHS positions Nova Scotia as Canada’s first province to offer all of its residents the benefits of a complete electronic patient care solution in a pre-hospital/out of hospital emergency services environment. Until now, this kind of technology was only available in a few major cities. And while putting Nova Scotia on the forefront of patient care reporting in Canada, the initiative will also create advances in pre-hospital emergency medicine for EHS. The Siren ePCR Suite includes data analysis tools that will allow EHS to generate reports to measure the performance of the system. Says Medusa president & CEO, Scott Campbell, “Digital patient care records provide a more comprehensive view of pre-hospital care than paper documentation ever could. Reports that used to take months to compile can now be generated in minutes. This will assist in developing enhanced procedures and practices for the entire province.”
Adds Deborah MacKay, Director of Communications & Dispatch Services at EHS, “The introduction of electronic patient care reporting over the upcoming months for both the ground and air components of our system will truly bring us a step closer to full integration of documentation, as both groups will be documenting patient care using the same tools and the same format”.
According to Tim Coolen, Vice President, Business Planning & Technologies for Emergency Medical Care (EMC), the management company contracted to manage the ground ambulance service, “Not only can patient care be enhanced through improved documentation and protocol development based on research, but the long-term administrative benefits to EHS can be very substantial. This product can help reduce our operating costs and improve operating efficiency.”