Hospital intensive care units (ICUs) generate extraordinary amounts of clinical data on a daily basis - thousands of data elements per day, per patient. Meanwhile, busy clinicians, who are often understaffed in these areas, need to concentrate on providing expert patient care while minimizing potential risks. Picis, the leading provider of high-acuity care information systems, has launched eView for Critical Care ManagerTM, part of the CareSuite® family of high-acuity solutions, in order to address these challenges. The new product is designed to consolidate clinically relevant information for the entire ICU patient census and present it in a concise, web-based view to help clinicians identify patients requiring attention. As a result, eView for Critical Care Manager helps hospitals boost efficiency and continuity of care both in the local ICU setting and remotely. Picis also announced several enhancements to its core perioperative and critical care clinical automation solutions, including advanced clinical documentation and a powerful new dynamic decision support system.

The critical care areas are among the most cost- and resource- intensive areas of the hospital, averaging 30-40 percent of hospital spending. Picis software automates the documentation and processes that supply clinicians with the information they need to more effectively and efficiently perform their jobs in these areas.

eView for Critical Care Manager:

• enables convenient web-based access to key patient trends in diagnostics and treatment results, thus enabling physicians to oversee many patients at once;
• provides clinicians with both a 'big picture' view of overall departmental status, and the ability to drill down to the complete electronic patient record with a single click; and
• allows clinicians - whether they are present in the ICU, working remotely from another location or based in an ICU telemedicine centre - to continuously view patient information prioritized by their acuity and drill down into their electronic chart as if they were present at the bedside.

Picis core critical care and perioperative product enhancements:

• a rules-based decision support system that notifies clinicians immediately when changes to patient information meet key conditions determined by the clinician, thus reducing the administrative burden and helping clinicians to promote patient safety initiatives;
• structured clinical documentation that enables clinicians to develop fully customized templates for essential functions such as admissions, procedure notes and discharge summaries, thereby saving clerical time, standardizing documentation, improving quality and saving money; and
• interoperability with microbiology results that provides surveillance and timely reporting of resistant organisms, importing fully compatible laboratory data into the Picis patient record for instant access.

Joaquin Álvarez, M.D., chief of intensive care at Fuenlabrada University Hospital, Madrid, Spain said, "Automated critical care systems are central to helping improve patient care. By allowing clinicians to view all patients and trends in a single snapshot and provide quick access to lab results, Picis helps hospitals increase the efficiency of their critical care departments as well as optimize their documentation."

According to Professor Jean-Louis Vincent, M.D., Ph.D., head of Department of Intensive Care at Erasme Hospital and chairman of the International Society of Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine, "The ICU/critical care department is the most expensive area of the hospital and produces a vast amount of patient data. In addition, because of the often complex and rapidly evolving nature of disease in many severely ill patients and the associated need for acute interventions and treatments, ICUs are areas particularly prone to medical errors. What's more, with these critically ill patients, what may seem to be a relatively minor error could in fact have major consequences. ICU/critical care departments should be equipped with easy-to-use clinical documentation systems and decision support tools to help limit such errors and allow nurses and physicians to spend less time on administrative tasks and paperwork and more time on patient care."

Related news articles:

• Picis' Profile

About Picis
Picis is a global provider of innovative information solutions that enable rapid and sustained delivery of clinical, financial and operational results in the acute care areas of the hospital. These high-acuity areas include the emergency department, operating and recovery rooms, and intensive care units. Picis offers the most advanced suite of integrated products focused on these life-critical areas of the hospital where the patients are the most vulnerable, the care process is the most complex and an increasing majority of hospital costs and potential revenue are concentrated. Headquartered in Wakefield, Massachusetts, Picis has licensed systems for use in more than 1,700 hospitals in 19 countries. More information is available at www.picis.com.

The information about this product is being provided for planning purposes only. eView for Critical Care Manager is currently available in English, French and Spanish. The Care Suite 8.2 core critical care and perioperative product is scheduled for general availability by the end of September.