Given the accelerated pace of change in healthcare since the onset of Covid-19, the HealthTech industry is well placed to meet the needs of hospitals, community sites and healthcare organisations. With demand for supplies, devices, health IT and telemedicine continuing to rise, innovation is more important than ever for the future of…
After two years of convening virtually, the International Forum on Quality and Safety in Healthcare returns in-person this June! Under the theme ‘Creating tomorrow today’, this year’s conference, jointly organised by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) and BMJ, endeavours to answer key questions including:
How do we support health and care staff who are burned out, exhausted and thinking of leaving their profession?
What do we do about….
We’re returning to the IPS Yorkshire Annual Conference under the theme ‘Future Focus - “Time” to Care’ for 2022. With infection prevention and control professions becoming increasingly under-resourced, we think it’s important to make the time now for reflection, discussion and innovation, enabling NHS workers to unlock more of their time in the future….
At the beginning of 2021 Paulina Parga, a former theatre nurse from Chile, transitioned into a new career in health tech with the Customer Success Team at MEG. She outlines why she decided to take the leap and how healthcare workers interested in a career change should approach it.
To date, MEG’s software has recorded more than half a million audits across nine countries, saving healthcare professionals hundreds of thousands of hours - time they’ve spent making things better!
With an +80% time saving when compared to manual processes or using legacy systems, MEG users spend less time doing audits and more time improving care standards for patients. MEG is rated 5* on...
In view of the current and rapidly changing situation with regards to the spread of coronavirus variants and the associated surge in patient numbers, we've recognised the increasing pressure on healthcare staff to:
carry out risk and/or medical assessments
follow additional protocols (e.g. isolation or exposure protocols, new infection control requirements, audits)
have easy access to guidance for re-deployed staff or NCHDs
‘MEG Support Tools’ is rebranding to ‘MEG’ as we continue to evolve and adapt to the rapidly growing needs of the global healthcare industry. The ‘new look’ (a new logo, refreshed brand colours and a shorter, catchier name) has been designed to reflect the evolution of MEG into an end-to-end quality management system which enables frontline workers to engage, measure and improve standards of care.
Since our formation in 2016, our company has changed dramatically. As we introduced more time-saving, easy to use tools for frontline staff, MEG’s product line naturally expanded from a niche digital tool to a full end-to-end quality management system (QMS).
We recognised that most healthcare providers have to use a complicated system of email, paper forms, Excel spreadsheets and hyperlinked documents to manage their audit, compliance, risk and patient safety processes. In response, MEG’s quality management system (QMS) was purpose-built to connect all the key components for the management of quality and patient safety conveniently in one place.
Today, our ‘all-in-one’ QMS software solution can be used on any mobile or desktop device to transform how frontline workers engage with quality improvement and patient safety initiatives. Individuals and teams can collect and organise information, collaborate with others, manage processes, automate reports and analyse insight dashboards with a simple click, swipe or scroll.
Brand Colours
The new brand colours bring together the three foundational pillars of MEG’s end-to-end Quality Management system (QMS): Audits/Surveys, Risk Management, and Document Management:
Overview of digital tools available for use within MEG’s QMS modules
The Logo and Tagline
‘Just MEG It’
One of MEG Support Tools earliest customers was Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital, London. The IPC leadership team recognised the frustration and overwhelm felt by their staff when conducting infection control audits in acute and community settings. They trusted in MEG’s vision and our promise to make life easier for their frontline workers using mobile technology.
Following a successful pilot and then Trust-wide roll-out, staff coined the term “Just MEG It” when referring to carrying out digital audits. We knew then that our promise had been realised - and from that point on ‘MEG’ was how we would be known.
The Tagline
The tagline “Engage, Measure and Improve” speaks to the ‘how’ of what we do:
MEG Modules: Engaging, easy to use digital data capture tools that replace paper, spreadsheets and 20th-century legacy tech systems with the handy mobile functionality we’re all used to in our personal lives
MEG Management Dashboards: Real-time data collection of information from the frontline for measurement and instant analysis; one place to gain a clearer view of what’s going on now and forecast for the future
MEG’s Quality Improvement Planning (QIP) tool: Manage improvement through automated correction actions on the ward, policy updates, training and shared learning.
MEG is still ‘MEG’ in Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese...!
We are adding to our incredible customer family all the time, both at home and internationally. The new name and look is one that translates across languages with ease - and easy is what we’re all about! Last year, thousands of healthcare workers across the world logged in to our app to ‘go MEG it’ when it came to:
Auditing and compliance
Managing the hospital accreditation process from one location (JCI, ACHS etc)
Incident reporting and risk management
Policy and document management
Patient and staff survey/feedback forms
Detailed reporting and analysis with comprehensive insights dashboards
“We’re inspired by our clients and share their drive to better the lives of frontline workers and improve the delivery of patient care. Putting clients at the centre of our product development has given us an innovative edge and MEG is now trusted by some of the leading healthcare centres across the world. The new brand reflects a new era for MEG, with a product that helps clients to drive a culture of quality and patient safety in their organisations. ”
The transition to using our new brand name, logo and colours starts from today and you will notice changes within our software platform, company website, social media and eventually across everything we do.
Here’s a summary of the changes you will see:
Our name (and logo) 'MEG Support Tools' is being shortened to 'MEG'. (It's what you've always called us anyway!)
The app icon and colours will change from blue to one of our three new brand colours (depending on which module/tool you're logged in to)
The cartoon character of ‘Meg' will continue to make an appearance in parts of the app but she will appear less in the dashboard and reporting areas
You can access the website and control panel from our new domain name: www.megit.com. If you want to add any audits, tools or modules to your account, please get in touch and we'll ‘MEG It’ for you!
You will also see a change in our email addresses from "@megsupporttools.com” to “@megit.com”
** However, you will still be able to reach us through the original email, phone number and website address that you’re familiar with **
While our branding has changed, the same friendly MEG team you are used to are all still here, ready and willing to help with any questions you may have!
We want to sincerely thank you for your continued support. We look forward to working together and delivering a more comprehensive service for you in 2021 and beyond.
Kerrill and The MEG Team
Celebrating its 20 year anniversary this CPD certified national conference brought together clinicians and managers leading local Clinical Audit for Improvement. Through a series of national updates, panel sessions, practical case studies, extended sessions and poster presentations an exceptional gathering of leading practitioners, clinicians, and policy makers set out the major developments, promote innovative areas of clinical audit, and debate the key challenges affecting clinical audit practice.
During the conference Kerrill Thornhill, MEG’s CEO & founder, discussed the role that technology can play in driving frontline workforce engagement in healthcare quality improvement. Watch the webinar below:
In this 10-minute ‘on-demand’ webinar, Kerrill will get attendees up to speed on developments in digital auditing and QI by focusing on the MEG Audit module in the app, the Action Planning tool and Insights Dashboard. Learn:
how advancements in mobile technology are finally making the jump from personal life to working life through a collaboration with healthcare leadership, frontline workers and health tech companies like MEG;
how cloud applications are making it easier for frontline workers to capture data, use dashboards to understand the data, collaborate on where improvements can be made and feel more invested in the quality improvement process with all necessary tools to hand.
create and delegate action plans and document evidence of the quality care process for stakeholders and regulators.
MEG’s mobile app allows users to quickly capture audit data and report incidents - bringing quality improvement directly into the hands of employees. The Insights dashboards are designed to help users make sense of the data that they collect from MEG’s system letting them filter and categorise information by location, staff, quality indicators and many other criteria.
About MEG
MEG is helping healthcare organisations engage their frontline workforce in audit and quality improvement through the use of mobile technology - bringing quality improvement directly into the hands of employees.
The Insights dashboards are designed to help users make sense of the data that they collect from MEG’s system letting them filter and categorise information by location, staff, quality indicators and many other criteria. Our modules include:
Audit & Survey
Incident Reporting & Risk Management
Document Management
Clinical Guidelines on Mobile Devices
Schedule a demo today to learn if MEG could help streamline all your quality, patient safety and compliance needs.
HealthIT Consulting is a consultancy-based business, operating in New Zealand to deliver smart health and hi-tech solutions to the health IT industry.
It offers extensive technological solutions for care organizations making it easier than ever before to improve results. Their business software + tailor-made solutions + services enable care organizations to improve patient care and to raise their performance.
With 35 years of working within the health IT sector, they’ve seen many health projects succeed and health systems grow and transition as they’ve adopted efficient hi-tech solutions enabling them to scale and operate more effectively.
Assisting healthcare providers with the end-to-end process of installing Infection and Control Surveillance Systems, by:
Developing business cases, project structures and architecture
Implementing and driving projects that are successful to the healthcare provider
Selecting and integrating effective software solutions
Providing continuous improvement measures
Offering industry experience in National Surveillance Systems, including New Zealand, Western Australia, Singapore, Wales, and Scotland
Providing expertise in the implementation of local hospital software
Contact: Mark Cox, Partner at HealthIT Consulting
Prior to HealthIT Consultancy, Mark was CEO (Asia Pacific) of ICNet International and then its Business Head following its acquisition by Baxter Healthcare Corporation.
Mark has extensive domain expertise in the turnkey delivery of infection control surveillance systems for healthcare providers.
Website: www.healthitconsulting.kiwi
Email: MarkCox@HealthITConsulting.kiwi
Phone: +64 27 268 5353
(Auckland, New Zealand)
On May 20th, the ACIPC hosted a ‘Covid-19 Q&A Panel Discussion’ as part of its GAMA Healthcare and ACIPC COVID-19 Webinar Series.
Chaired by Professor Brett Mitchell, this webinar gave the latest update on COVID-19. The panel consisted of experts from the world of infectious diseases and infection prevention and control: Martin Kiernan, Kathy Dempsey, Dr Andrew Stewardson and Belinda Henderson
Below, five key takeaways from the webinar.
Depending on where in the world you are, there are a few different variations in sequence - and none are incorrect. Overall, the principles are based around making sure staff are kept safe.
Recently, changes to the doffing sequence, in particular, were made in order to reduce the number of times a healthcare worker had to go to the facial area to remove PPE; doffing actions were bundled to reduce this.
Key takeaway:
‘Clean hands, clean face’ is the overriding principle to prevent staff from going anywhere near their faces with dirty hands.
The panel recognised that not all healthcare settings are able to conduct proper fit testing and some hospitals that have implemented it have actually struggled to cope with demand.
Add to the mix, supply issues for certain types of masks and the fact that fit testing can be associated with a lot of wastage of this precious PPE resource, the panel concluded that, in the midst of a pandemic, this was not the right time to start this debate.
Key message:
Fit checking for all masks is essential and should be the standard to aim for.
There was no conclusive evidence that fit testing actually provided superior performance in terms of prevention.
Dr Stewardson suggested that perhaps a distinction had to be made about PCRs being positive, as opposed to infectious viruses being shed. Data suggests that people are infectious for around the first 7-10 days from infection onset, with peak transmissibility occurring early on in that period.
Mention was also made of troubling cases of people bring PCR positive (shedding virus) for a really long time and unable to return to work as a result. In the case of healthcare workers, especially, it’s becoming a common problem. A definitive answer sometimes is to try and get a viral culture but that can be quite a challenge in itself.
Coronavirus-specific IgE antibodies appear at about 10 days and that coincides with a reduction in viral load and transmissibility, so it looks like an adaptive immune response which is protective against infection. The ‘immune passport’ concept is one where a serological test will reveal people who are positive and identify them as ‘protected’ and able to be safely exposed.
However, there are many groups, including the WHO, who have responded quickly and negatively against this concept. They bring attention to the importance of thinking about what the PCR really means and accepting that that there is still a lot about immunity and this disease that is still unknown:
Not all people who recover from Covid-19 have detectable antibodies (10-20%)
Of those that do, there an unclear relationship between antibodies and functional immunity or protection against virus e.g. the threshold level to establish immunity is unknown
Questions still exist about the duration of immunity, if immunity does exist
Questions about the tests themselves, with a recent report showing 50-60% sensitivity with some of the commercially-available serological tests in Australia.
Key takeaways:
It’s possible that those who test positive on serology are not immune
And it’s possible that those who test negative are immune
Evidence will continue to be gathered in the coming weeks and months but, as for now, it’s hard to be definitive as to what it all means.
Australia has approached this by making a distinction between CPR broadly (differentiating between CPR and advanced CPR with airway management often intubation) and that of chest compressions, with the position that *chest compressions are not an aerosol-generating procedure.
In the absence of conclusive evidence that chest compression/defibrillation is associated with virus transmission, the recommendation being made nationally is that first responder can initiate chest compression and defibrillation with ‘droplet precautions’ in patients with suspected or confirmed Covid-19 infection, while others are donning their ‘airborne precautions’ and enter to take over airways management.
* Below is the systematic review mentioned by the panel that concluded that chest compressions weren’t associated with an increased of SARS transmission and that the risk was actually associated with airway management.
Tran K, Cimon K, Severn M, Pessoa-Silva CL, Conly J. Aerosol generating procedures and risk of transmission of acute respiratory infections to healthcare workers: a systematic review. PLoS One. 2012;7(4):e35797. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0035797
Broader thoughts around aerosol-generating procedures…
There was a call for consensus among the professional groups and public health bodies as to what is an aerosol-generating procedure (AGP). It was recognised that this was something that needed to be agreed upon in a time of calm and not one of crisis.
Key takeaway:
Universal consensus on the definition of an AGP is needed. Particular procedures causing confusion (and subsequently PPE supply issues in the UK) as to their status as AGP (or not), include:
Oral suction
Nebulisers
Chest compressions
Dr Stewardson indicated that lots of therapeutic studies were currently being carried out the moment - but all in the context of clinical trials. The outcomes of these, whether effective or not, are likely to be available before a vaccine.
Key takeaway:
For the moment, the approach to managing the virus is still centred around infection prevention and public health measures.
Click below to learn more about MEG’s Covid-19 Hospital Toolkit - a feature bundle in our QMS software application that current IPC customers find most useful in adapting to the new reality that SARS-CoV-2 on the wards brings.
As we finally start to experience a flattening of the curve and IPC teams’ attention is starting to slowly turn from pandemic ‘crisis response’, questions about how the last few months will possibly impact HAI numbers and AMS programmes are beginning to surface.
In addition, how will hospitals manage the new reality of wards and departments containing SARS-CoV-2 infected patients mixing with those in the ‘highly vulnerable’ groups?
Our infographic below summarises the main points highlighted in a recent opinion piece on the topic (1):
Perhaps now is the time to harness the renewed enthusiasm and respect for infection control programmes in hospitals and make the business case for investment in technology to support and strengthen infection prevention and antimicrobial stewardship efforts.
We can help you do this.
MEG’s award-winning digital Audit Management system is used in leading hospitals to:
carry out audits on any kind of device, anytime, anywhere - even in poor connectivity
quickly identify and prioritise problems with ‘risk-level’ heatmaps,
create, delegate and automate actions/tasks to 'close-the-loop'
check the status of non-compliance action items - even with maintenance teams; clear obstacles fast
get detailed reports in real-time, and
monitor compliance rates over time
MEG's integrated QIP tool is the workhorse of modern IPC and AMS teams.
Want to learn more? Click below to speak to us about our extended free trial offer for IPC hospital and community teams.
References
(1) Stevens, M., Doll, M., Pryor, R., Godbout, E., Cooper, K., & Bearman, G. (2020). Impact of COVID-19 on traditional healthcare-associated infection prevention efforts. Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology, 1-2. doi:10.1017/ice.2020.141
A joint statement released yesterday by the CQC, and shared with providers of health and adult social care for #NHSEngland, has thanked health and care staff all over England for their heroic responses to the many challenges facing them and the people they are caring for.
They reiterated that now, more than ever, safety remains a priority for the whole system to reduce the risk of avoidable harm to people by following safety systems, guidance and recommendations that ensure the right care is provided, as intended, every time and continuing to report safety incidents locally using professional and clinical judgement. They also emphasized the need to continue to learn from what works as well as what does not.
They asked all leaders of health and care services to support this by encouraging a supportive culture where people are free to speak up about risks and adverse outcomes.
A Speak Up culture is not just about encouraging workers to raise concerns: it is about listening to what they are saying, acting on the information and providing feedback.
If you are interested in learning more about how MEG can help you drive a Just Culture of quality improvement, click the link to get in touch.
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