Austco will be exhibiting at Healthcare Estates 2025 on 21st and 22nd October at Booth H13.

This year we will be covering a number of subjects and in particular looking at benefits for various clients. Below we cover of some of these benefits.

Prevention is better than Cure

In the online world we live in today, many clients have concerns over Cyber Security, and particularly when adding new systems to their networks. With SMA from Austco, our software is regularly updated to combat cyber threats, so providing confidence to IT teams that our systems are safe to deploy, and will always be reviewed to account for the latest cyber threats.

Digital Transformation of Clinical Workflows in Hospitals

Until recently, nurse call was a simple button to summon help in the event of patient distress, no better than a fire alarm. But with the advent of IP technology, nurse call has evolved from simple build­ing system to IT data system, a true healthcare communications platform with capabilities well beyond buttons and lights. Because nurse call touches other clin­ical data systems, it is in a unique position to leverage communica­tion workflows.

Nurse call has come a long way from a “call bell” system.  Today it’s communications plus situational awareness.  Care communications platforms now bring context-dependent information to touchscreens and other displays including mobile devices.  Digitising workflows is not rocket science, or perhaps more aptly brain surgery, we’re talking about using technology to do the work of raising calls and alerts, communicating with all relevant departments, making data visible that was previously hidden elsewhere in applications.  Where well-planned and implemented, care communication workflows effectively resolve technology and organisational silos, drive direct communications and silent annunciations, identify bottlenecks and combat alarm fatigue.  Giving nurses more time to care, giving patients better experiences.

The above excerpt is taken from Austco’s White Paper Digital Transformation of Clinical Workflows in Hospitals https://www.austco.com/white-paper-digital-transformation-of-clinical-workflows-in-hospitals/

Digital Transformation of other Workflows

We don’t have to stop at reviewing and digitising workflows for Clinical staff, we can utilise the systems in place to work for operational teams too. Because Austco’s Workflow feature is so flexible, it can be programmed to deal with a wide variety of workflows for varying departments utilising digital end points and / or integrations to provide inputs or outputs. At Healthcare Estates this year we will be showing some examples of how this can work, but will also be looking to take on new examples from visitor’s feedback.

Better Visibility

In the busy world of Acute Hospitals, it is important to be able to clearly see when a notification, call or ultimately an emergency is active, and where the source of that call is. Austco’s latest screens are LCD and are therefore clear, and can show more information that the traditional displays. They can also be customised to show location information when calls are not active.  Specific call types can be programmed to clearly show different types of calls, and notifications.

This year at Healthcare Estates, we will be showing something very different to compliment the clarity of screens and use of follow-the-lights, in order to make it even more clear that a certain call type is active (especially Emergency or Cardiac). Come along to our stand to see this in action.

Joined Up Systems

With more and more data being held in disperse systems, it can be very useful to link systems together, both to avoid duplication of input, but also to bring greater benefit. At Austco we have been integrating with other systems for many years, and at our stand this year we will be able to demonstrate some examples of integrations that can benefit Hospital staff.

To see our innovations in action, come and visit Booth H13. To register for the event click here. 

To have a pre-booked demonstration at the event, please click here and choose “System Demonstration at Healthcare Estates” to then see the available slots.

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Austco attended and presented at European Healthcare Design 2025 this week at the Royal College of Physicians in London.

We presented on the 2^nd day amidst other presentations around Digitisation, Workflow and Technology. We were joined by other great presenters from around the globe which made for a very interesting and thought-provoking few days.

Kevin Higgins and Peter Ball presented for us on “Digital Transformation of Clinical Workflow in Hospitals” While it was a little “Jeeves and Wooster” at times, it was certainly entertaining and seemed to grab the attention of the audience.

Transforming workflows through the use of digital technology can certainly help bring efficiencies, but can also help to improve patient care and improve the wellbeing of staff. We are getting more and more interest in this area and continue to introduce new and improved features around digital workflow. @Kevin Higgins finished off the session by giving a brief glimpse into the future and what technologies are likely to be coming along to help in this area. Some of these will be here sooner than some may think!”

 

 

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We were delighted and privileged to be invited to attend the European Healthcare Design Panel Debate in London last night. We enjoyed listening to some inspirational speakers, and there were some very interesting points raised around the UK health system, and potential solutions to problems, and certainly food for thought.  Our technology will be able to help to deal with some of the issues and we are looking forward to presenting at the EHD event in June.

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Austco’s 4^th generation Tacera hardware, when deployed throughout a building, creates a network of sensors. Staff, and residents or patients carry a small, battery-powered badge that automatically interacts with these sensors to report their location. These badges are rechargeable.  With each interaction of badge and sensor, data is sent to the RTLS server, and Tacera records the badge location and time. Having RTLS built-in to Tacera avoids the cost of additional 3^rd party hardware. This gives several other advantages too:

Mobile Duress

Ideal for staff safety in Emergency Departments and throughout hospital wards. The badges have programmable buttons, and users can use them to call for help, wherever they are within the facility. When pressed, the location displayed in the nurse call system will be that badge’s current location and the type of alarm programmed for that button. With the two-button badge, the second button can either be programmed to cancel the alarm raised by the first button, or to raise a different type of alarm.

Reporting

All location and button press data is stored for reporting, including who the badge was assigned to, room visits, response times, and time spent in rooms. With this information, healthcare organisations can access complete audit reports, better monitor how care is delivered, and identify opportunities to improve.

Automatic Staff Presence

With dual-technology RTLS, the badges and call points interact wirelessly to record a presence event in a location. Staff no longer need to press a physical presence button and staff presence is displayed on workstations, mobile devices, and other interfaces within the system. The presence events can optionally initiate other processes, and all events are logged for reporting.

Automated Workflow

Many processes can be initiated with auto-presence and below is a small selection of examples:

• Send messages
• Place audio calls
• Automatically log completed rounds
• Move a bed workflow from current stage to the next and send a message to the staff responsible for the next stage
• Mute the sounders
• Display role-specific content on in-room screens and / or mobile devices

The product is constantly being developed to add to these features wherever we can provide additional benefit to our customers.

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Austco representatives were in Malta recently to support our local Partner Tektraco.   We enjoyed meeting our customers at several healthcare sites and organisations where we gave presentations and demonstrations of our latest Tacera IP Nurse Call and System.  Our meetings went very well and comments like “this is far more than just a Nurse Call System” were great to hear! 

Workflow, Mobile and RTLS were particular features that resonated well and we are looking forward to talking to our customers more about these solutions.

This was just one of a series of ongoing visits to support each of our Partners across Europe, meeting customers to learn about the challenges they face in managing their hospitals and to explain what our systems can do to help them

We would like to thank Tektraco for their kind hospitality during our visit and also for arranging the presentations.

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Many Nurse Call screens in Hospital settings tend to limit themselves to displaying basic alarm information and sometimes the time, and don’t really accommodate any additional information.

Given that we install screens of various types across facilities, Austco believe in working with our clients to understand what information would be useful to display on these screens when there are no alarms present.

Branding was a common theme in feedback and so we have been able to customise colour schemes on the displays, as well as displaying logos and Site (or Trust) name.

Location information was also important, and so this can be set per screen, and in corridors can help with navigating the various corridors of a hospital facility.

Screens having a unified appearance was also popular, so it is easy to identify a Nurse Call screen from other screens around a facility, and to have a layout that is familiar regardless of which screen you are looking at.

As we are a global company, multi-lingual support was very important, and the ability to display unique characters for many languages was a feature we needed to allow for, and our LCD screens enable this.

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Austco’s mobile app is free to download and can work on Android or IOS phones. It offers the below functionality through an easy to use interface:

Alarm Management

Alarms are raised on the Nurse Call system in the usual way, but as well as the alarms appearing on various screens, Nurses can also receive alarms from only patients/locations assigned to them. Alarms will display in the same priority order as in the nurse call system.

Staff always know which alarms need attention and can take several actions with each alarm: VOIP callback, Accept, Reject and Escalate. If accepted, this shows on other Nurses’ devices, so they know they don’t need to attend. With VOIP callback, Nurses can establish the priority of the call by talking to the patient, and can prioritise other tasks based on that conversation.

Mobile Workflow

Calls can be raised from the mobile app via the workflow tab, and these can form a workflow.  A Nurse may want to raise a call for transport to move a patient, and that call will go through to the Porter team. They may then want to raise a call for the cleaning team to clean the area before either the patient returns, or a new patient is moved into the bed / room. When the cleaning team arrive they may want to let everyone know that cleaning is in progress, so no-one enters the room / area. Once finished they will want to notify all concerned that the bed / room in that location is ready. All of this can be done via workflow and can be done on the mobile app.

Reminder calls can also be set using the mobile app for such things as rounding, medication, patient turning etc.

VoIP Audio

As well as being able to callback to a patient call, VoIP calls can be raised from the mobile app.

If you would like to find out more, or to book a demonstration, please click here

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At Austco we understand the pressures that Estates and Maintenance teams face across busy healthcare facilities. We have therefore given some thought as to how our systems can help these teams to both carry out their work, but also to report on how well they are doing. The below three sections identify areas in which Tacera can help.

Self Monitoring

Austco’s Tacera system monitors itself for faults, and when it finds something wrong, it will raise a Maintenance showing the location of the issue and the time the call has been active.  These maintenance calls can be sent to whichever screens or devices the customer requires, and in most cases, this would be to a screen in the Estates Office. However, with our mobile solution, the maintenance calls can go to specific mobile devices, normally those held by members of the maintenance team, so they can be updated on issues with the system on the move. Other screens can have these calls filtered out so only patient calls, emergencies etc appear on the main Nurse Call screens.

In addition to this, the maintenance calls can also be sent via text or email to enable a wider reach for these notifications.

All of this is designed to help spot issues sooner, so we can maximise up-time.

Maintenance Requests

Our system can be used to create workflows that can be used by maintenance teams, but also for sending maintenance requests to those teams. Calls can be raised for all sorts of maintenance issues including electrical issues, heating issues, lighting issues, and any other issue you would like programming onto the system that would need a maintenance request. These requests again could be directed to a screen in the Estates Office, or to specific mobile devices, or can be sent via text or e-mail. When the Maintenance Team arrives to deal with the issue, they can cancel the call at source and the system records the response time. The process of raising requests in this way avoids the need to clinical staff to have to return to the Nurse Base to raise a request, whether that be via phone, e-mail, or any other method. It can be done at source so the clinical team can get on with their work. The workflow can be made to show more information, so instead of just cancelling the call when the Maintenance Engineer arrives, they can identify they they have arrived and are starting work on the issue, and the system can be set to then cancel the initial request automatically, as this is now “in progress”. Once the issue has been resolved, the Engineer can set the call to “resolved” and again an audit trail of how long each action has taken will be logged for reporting. This process can be tailored to the customer’s needs.

Compliance

Reporting for standards such as SFG20 is becoming more of a requirement than a nice-to-have. With our workflow Screens, we can set a separate page specifically for this. Buttons are created for such things as quarterly checks on the Nurse Call system, press to start checks and press to finish checks. This leaves an audit trail of the checks, and the locations checked for reporting. This can be done for any system that needs to be checked quarterly, annually or even monthly.

We have two options for the screens to use for workflow. Our App Station offers a larger screen, and the Touchpoint is a lower cost option and is of a more convenient size for areas that are tight on wall space. Each can have multiple tabs to enable more functionality.

And of course, Austco’s Workflow also works seamlessley on all mobile phones for unrivalled versatility.

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This week some members of the Europe team are in Gibraltar carrying out Routine Maintenance on the Medicom systems installed there. The systems have been installed for many years and are still going strong. As well as carrying out the PPM work, we take the opportunity to build the relationship with our client while in this lovely location.

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