Making the case for mobile assistants in the NHS

MCAs are proving to be very popular

Although the case for mobile clinical assistants (MCAs) seems overwhelming with many trials providing positive feedback, achieving a rollout across the NHS has proved difficult.

This is partly because healthcare staff are unaware of the benefits, and partly because of the difficulty of changing the way a hospital or health trust operates.

Barbara Stuttle, national clinical lead for nursing at Connecting for Health, is an evangelist of the technology, and is determined to achieve a wider rollout before she hangs up her fob watch in three years.

“The 50-million-dollar question is how does it make the jump from pilot to rollout?” she said. “It is easy to get a pilot and difficult to get a rollout ­ – I have called things pilots in the past just to make them happen.”

Engendering such change is not easy, but Stuttle believes the technology will prove itself.

“Sometimes you need the expenditure to blitz a hospital or trust in one go,” she said. “But the key really is getting technology in people’s hands and showing them what it can do.”

MCAs have a barcode reader to read prescriptions quickly and efficiently and prevent incorrect prescriptions; a camera that helps with wound care and recording damage in child-protection cases; the ability to demonstrate conditions visually to patients; and quick access to, and inputting of, data.

“Some nursing colleagues transcribe three sets of care records after they have seen a patient. Combined with electronic records this system would enable them to do it once, and at the point of care ­ – making it more accurate,” said Stuttle.

The NHS needs to embrace technology if it is to continue to do its job efficiently, she said. “We are one of the biggest employers in the country and one of the most luddite ­ – that needs to change,” said Stuttle. “And this is such a people-dominated service that we need to enable people to use their unique talents – ­ this technology is a way to do that.”

In the future, Stuttle said that patients could be in charge of the devices, with results fed automatically to consultants, allowing them look at a patient’s condition and determine the priority of who they need to visit, easing the travel burden on district nurses.

“This is the beginning of patients being able to diagnose themselves,” she said. “This will free up nurses’ and clinicians’ time and enable the whole system to operate more efficiently.”