Baycrest Health Sciences & Baycrest Foundation Publications
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We Innovate products & markets EASING CARE TRANSITIONS Transitioning patients from one care setting to another can be challenging for healthcare teams and stressful for clients and families, particularly if there's a behavioural concern. By themselves, discharge notes and medical records cannot provide a complete picture of a client's needs. Taking a design approach, the Innovation Technology and Design Lab at Baycrest developed a technological solution that includes video capture, teleconferencing and a "cloud" portal to store the videos. In a pilot study, the group tested the video component with six clients who were transferred from Baycrest's Behavioural Neurology Unit to long-term care homes. The videos showed how clients interacted with others, engaged in activities and responded to methods used to manage their behaviors. Care providers at the nursing homes noted that the videos "communicated patients' abilities much more clearly than written summaries," said Bianca Stern, director of Culture, Arts and Innovation. "They helped staff see the person behind the challenging behaviours." 32 BAYCREST & BAYCREST FOUNDATION www.baycrest.org PATIENTS RECORD THEIR OWN SYMPTOMS Using computer tablets, patients in the palliative care unit at Baycrest Hospital can now report on their own health status each day – their degree of pain, for example, or their appetite, mood or energy level. The information is automatically uploaded into the hospital's electronic health record system where it is graphed and displayed over time, helping doctors and nurses monitor changes in the patient's well-being. Created by programmers in Baycrest's eHealth department, the application is based on a questionnaire commonly used by clinicians to assess palliative patients' health status. Allowing patients to enter their own data into the record system minimizes the risk of errors and helps to reduce staff workload. In the future, patients may help to manage their own care electronically by entering and monitoring information such as their blood pressure readings using wireless devices connected to their own charts.