The Role of IT In Ensuring Resident Safety In Care Homes
The health and social care sector is rapidly undergoing a digital transformation to improve the quality of care and raise standards of resident safety and wellbeing in care homes. This means that the role of IT systems has never been more important: technology is now much more than just an administrative assistant.
Modern care homes are now underpinned by IT infrastructure that is central to safeguarding residents, maintaining secure communication, and efficient medication management. Here’s a look at how technology is transforming the care sector, and how our Huddersfield based IT services can help.
Digital care planning and medication management
The majority of healthcare records have now migrated to electronic records, but these tools are far more sophisticated than just digitised patient notes. They play a key role in planning and medication administration, and are capable of alerting care staff to missed doses and re-ordering schedules.
These tools reduce incidences of human error and provide a clear audit trail, which helps to raise standards of service delivery. However, these advantages only take full effect if the IT infrastructure of the care home is secure, reliable and efficient. If the hardware is outdated, or the networks are sluggish and slow, the standards of care will be undermined.
Our IT service teams will take a proactive approach to managing your IT infrastructure, identifying any weaknesses or areas that could be improved, and anticipating issues before they have time to escalate. This will lead to streamlined operations with minimal disruption and downtime, enabling your team to deliver the highest standards of care at all times.
Round the clock monitoring and alerts
One of the most widely used patient care tools are remote monitoring systems, which detect and alert staff to potential incidents without the need for them to physically check up on the resident. Fast and reliable WiFi connectivity is at the heart of this, and our team will ensure that your network works swiftly and seamlessly at all times.
This saves time and frees up staff for other duties, and also means that residents will receive immediate help when they need it, potentially reducing accidents or serious health emergencies. Staff will have more quality time to spend engaging with the residents, and fewer journeys to hospital and the administrative work required to log an adverse incident.
Remote monitoring also improves the quality of life for residents, not only with faster emergency support, but also because staff will need to make less frequent physical check ups throughout the night or when the patient is resting, allowing them to sleep without being disturbed.
Cybersecurity and data protection
Robust cybersecurity and data protection are crucial for care homes as they are entrusted with large amounts of highly sensitive data, from medical records to financial details. A cyberattack not only endangers the safety of residents, but also risks breaching GDPR, which could have legal consequences and cause serious reputational damage to the home.
Our team will work with you to understand your unique cybersecurity needs, and implement robust IT security measures, including the most effective firewalls and strong endpoint protection. We will continuously monitor your IT systems for suspicious activity, so any potential incidents can be quickly contained and mitigated.
Secure communication systems
A good care home maintains clear and regular communication with the resident’s families, and also with the supporting network of GPs, therapists, and other social care professionals. This calls for modern cloud based IT systems that can provide video calling tools and other messaging platforms, enabling safe and effective communication and collaboration.
Disaster recovery management
At Bee IT Solutions, we have our own dedicated data centre that is protected by the most sophisticated cyber security and physical security systems.
This means that your critical data can be backed up and stored securely off-site, so that in the event of a power cut, hardware failure or cyber attack, you can retrieve essential information such as care notes, access controls and remote monitoring tools.
We can help you implement and test a comprehensive disaster recovery plan, so that operations can be restored as soon as possible and disruption to resident care is kept to a minimum.
No matter how caring and highly skilled your team is, if your IT systems are letting you down, then your care home will never be as safe or compliant with regulations and CQC standards as it could be. If you’d like to find out more about how our managed service providers can help you, talk to us today.
