Issue link: http://digitaleditions.uberflip.com/i/1388210
145 Standalone Chapters NMH Annual Rep t | 2020 Jennifer McWilliams who was diagnosed with COVID-19 2 weeks prior to delivering the first newborn baby of the year, Brody McWilliams Brown. were able to continue working, providing a valuable resource for the hospital that would not have been possible without an electronic health record. While allowing clinicians to assess and record patient care and progress, the electronic health record also played a role in reducing infection transmission risk by facilitating: contactless patient notes handling, remote telephone clinics for numerous departments, remote postnatal follow up with earlier discharge from hospital, and the reduction of time spent face- to-face with COVID-19 patients due to access to central monitoring. New clinic and ward builds within MN-CMS are essential in line with structural developments in the hospital and requires a significant amount of planning and hard work. In line with any changes either to the software of the system or the architecture of the hospital means extensive testing has to be carried out by the MN-CMS team prior to release, to ensure the Powerchart build matches the new structure and the software is working as designed. The main support by the MN-CMS team is the phone and email support as well as the face-to-face support which are all essential parts of any large electronic system. It is that support that has enabled the acceptance of the system and gained the trust of the users even though at times any problems with access can be very frustrating to everyone. Pager and phone support is available Monday to Friday, while phone support, provided by AMS, is available out of hours. The local team also provide cover outside of core working hours for any planned downtime or upgrade to the system. One of the great challenges of healthcare is routine data collection and concise but complete documentation. It is the first measure of quality of care and although we are improving we still have a long way to go. The challenge then will be to maintain it. Throughout 2020, the team have been involved in daily data quality monitoring and a significant amount of time continues to be taken up by first checking for and then following up on incomplete documentation. At regular intervals upgrades are made to the MN- CMS software and in 2020 there were upgrades to the Maternity and Gynaecology summary pages, as well as an upgrade and optimisation of the Neonatal Summary pages, which adopted the actual workflow format. Both upgrades proceeded smoothly with minimal disruption with the MN-CMS team in the background ensuring any issues were dealt with immediately. In 2021, in conjunction with Clinical Engineering, a planned upgrade is due to the iBUS environment. This is the platform that integrates bedside medical devices with Powerchart. As far as the future is concerned, the MN-CMS electronic health record is continuously being optimised through a centralised national structure. As more and more users realise the benefits, more and more requests are made for enhancements. The ability to provide these will depend on clinical priorities, national agreement and available resources. The main national aim at the present time is to enable all maternity, neonatal and gynaecology hospitals in Ireland to have the same electronic health record and to be the first country to achieve that goal. On a local level, MN-CMS Team continues to work with all areas of the hospital to get the most from our electronic health record. Our aim is to support and guide users on every aspect of MN-CMS to achieve the maximum benefit for our patients and us all as health care users and in return we appreciate the trust and support for us in trying to achieve this.