Cork nurse develops paperless nursing management system
Ali-Rose Sisk's SafeCare Nursing software can reduce the time spent on paperwork and increase contact time with patients
A nurse from East Cork has developed a paperless nursing management system which reduces documentation and audit time for nurses, allowing for more patient contact time.
Ali-Rose Sisk from Rostellan in East Cork, started working in healthcare at the tender age of 15.
“I always maintain we were all fired out the door to work in our house,” she laughs.
Ms Sisk ended up in the nursing home sector and “fell in love with it.”
“I was working in the kitchen, I was playing music for residents, I was doing a bit of everything,” she said.
Sisk went on to do her four-year nursing undergrad in UCC and until recently, was based in London, where she was working on a Marie Curie PhD scholarship to develop NHS palliative care services for people with early-onset dementia.
She flew back in March to help on the frontline of the pandemic at home.
Despite being just 25-years-old, Ms Sisk has worked in the healthcare sector for almost a decade and says, throughout her career, she has struggled with the amount of time being given over to paperwork at the expense of contact time with patients.
“It's a problem in many sectors, but in nursing it was really taking from the patient contact time and I found that very conflicting internally. Especially now, we have no people coming in to see residents and residents can be quite unwell. They need our time.”
“I came up with the idea of SafeCare which simply digitises what we were doing on paper, but reduces the time spent on the task, making our lives easier and returning time to care.”
“And it saves the nursing home about €100,000 each year.”
Ms Sisk says a survey of over 170,000 nurses suggested paperwork occupies more time than any other task in the sector, accounting for over 50% of nurses time in some instances.
“We recently piloted our latest software in a nursing home down in East Cork where I'm based myself, and they were averaging around three to four hours a day on paperwork. We intend to reduce that by up to 70%.”
Our SafeCare Nursing Software director Ali-Rose Sisk on site at Oaklodge Nursing home with HIHI clinical nurse manager Noreen Lynch.
— SafeCare Nursing Software (@SafecareNS) November 6, 2020
SafeCare, returning time to care.
Diarmuid O Dalaigh#safecare #nursing #enterpriseireland #safecarenursingsoftware #rn #nurse #uccalumni pic.twitter.com/gBY4ZxAcrc
Ms Sisk says the private health and the public health services are “quite slow to transition to digital health” but her background in code development, artificial intelligence and machine learning made it easy for her to see the possibilities.
“What our software does is very simple. It provides us with the least amount of information needed to do the best job and have the best outcome.”
“But, by the user putting in information in a very simple manner, for example, Mary had fluids, John had half a dinner, Alice's mobility isn't great today, we can do huge amounts with the back end of the software where the information is stored.”
“Using algorithms we can say to a nursing home owner, Alice is at higher risk. She's not mobilizing great today and she didn't eat or drink much yesterday.
“For us, it's about making the software simple for the user, but using the back end to spit out information that makes us work better as clinicians, improve care quality and audit the nursing home without paper and pen.”
There are 580 private care homes in Ireland and the sector is growing "at a ferocious rate," she said, adding that 70% of us will need a nursing home at one point in our lives.
"That gives an idea of the number of care homes that we need and the huge demand for these types of products, and they're really not on the market,” Sisk explained.
Ms Sisk piloted her software with Oaklodge Nursing Home in Cloyne, during the lockdown with the aid of Health Innovation Hub Ireland (HIHI), which was established by the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation and the Department of Health, supported by Enterprise Ireland (EI) and the Health Service Executive (HSE) to drive collaboration between the health service and enterprise by offering companies the opportunity for pilot and clinical validation studies and the HSE access to innovative products and services.
Ms Sisk said everything ran smoothly and the feedback from the nursing home and its staff was “fantastic."
SafeCare Nursing Software is supported by New Frontiers, Enterprise Ireland’s national entrepreneur development programme for early-stage startups and Ms Sisk is hoping to raise €250,000 in a funding round in April to move forward with the innovative idea.
“It's all very swift moving and I have had to look at it from a business perspective, but at the end of the day, I'm scrubbing up at the weekends I am going in on my night shifts, I'm in the hospital and in the care home - I am living the problem.”
“I've been told the best products are those that come from people that face the problem day to day and I am.”
