Digital Nurse Assisant: More time for patients


Nurses spend a lot of time on things that have little to do with direct patient contact: You need to log in regularly on the PC, look for medical records, enter new data and to vote on this documentation work also with colleagues to ensure that everything is all right .

Researchers at the American IT company Xerox are currently developing a system to automate the parts of these tasks and to allow the nursing staff to provide more time for patients. The so-called digital Nurse Assisant is part of a larger automation project should be improved in the existing health management systems, Technology Review reported in its online edition.

The Xerox project that emerges from the research laboratory PARC in Palo Alto is, not only IT professionals, but also ethnographers, to find out how exactly does the nursing staff. It found, among other things, why exactly does it take until the documentation is complete - and as difficult to use current systems for management of electronic health records are. Every time a nurse logs into their workstation, they had to go through in one case up to six menus, until they had the necessary information. The challenges of coordination with other employees were also readily apparent.

"Imagine a sister before that enters a hospital room," says Markus Fromherz, chief innovation of the health division at Xerox. "You must not go to a computer. Instead, the system recognizes the card, which it carries, and logs them on automatically." The Digital Assistant Nurse also knew which patient is in the room and what tasks need to be completed immediately.

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