05 June 2020
An integration that boosts automation and frees up the time of nurses to focus on important clinical tasks. Since 2014, the Norwegian town of Lillehammer has used automated medicine-dispensing robots as part of an effort to ensure home care residents receive the right medicine at the right time.
Now, the robots have been integrated with the Norwegian Gerica medical records system delivered by Tietoevry. The integration boosts automation and frees up the time of nurses to focus on important clinical tasks.
The dispensing robots, developed by Evondos, guide home care patients to take the right medication at the dosage at the right time, as prescribed. Technical alerts such as "medicine delivered" and "medicine not delivered" from the robots are automatically logged in the Gerica medical record system before being communicated to Lifecare Mobile Care, a home service application used by healthcare professionals.
“We need to make everyday life easier for our staff. They should focus on their professional field and the patients – so the technology needs to be as easy as possible to use. This new way of dispensing medicines also minimizes the risk of medication errors,” says Bjørn Lie, digitalization coordinator in the municipality of Lillehammer, who has been central to the integration project between Evondos and Tietoevry.
Lillehammer has been using the Evondos solution since 2014 and is one of many municipalities in Norway that uses electronic medication. It was especially important for Lillehammer to achieve integration between the Gerica system delivered by Tietoevry and Evondos.
“It takes time for the employees to handle multiple systems. About half of those working in home care have help with administering medicines. If they can save some time from having a simpler system, it will also mean that the home service will have more time for the patients,” says Lie.
The integration work between Evondos and Tietoevry started in April 2019 as Lillehammer wanted to get all notifications, incidents and communications from Evondos' service directly into Gerica, via Lifecare eSense and to the mobile phone that the healthcare personnel are carrying. The integration was completed in January 2020.
“Evondos and Tietoevry have been fantastic partners. They have been following up closely. We at Lillehammer have been clear on what we wanted, and the collaboration has worked very well and led to results,” says Lie.
Managing one system is easier and saves time. The documentation goes automatically whenever the medicine is delivered, if the medicine is not delivered, or if there is a technical error. The employees in the municipality need less training, and it is easier for them to stay motivated.
“We believe this integration is not only important to Lillehammer, but will be of great value to all municipalities using the Gerica system from Tietoevry.”
Lillehammer has had 26 medication robots from Evondos in use during the project period. Now they are now ready to grow that number. Between 80 and 100 users are mapped, and the aim is for 70 medication robots to be rolled out by mid-June 2020.
“There has been a major change in Lillehammer employees since the integration. The staff is highly motivated and think the medication robot is fun. They see how much it means for the users to be able to handle their own medicines and experience increased mastery of their life,” says Lie.
“The attitude in Lillehammer is that all users who can benefit from a multi-dose dispenser should be given the opportunity,” he adds.