Serco helps Hospital keep in touch

Leading Health provider Serco has been piloting the world's first real time Wi-Fi enabled touch screen application known as In Touch. In Touch has been developed exclusively at Forth Valley Royal Hospital in Scotland in collaboration between NHS Forth Valley and Serco.

As a result, patients who require a porter at Forth Valley Royal Hospital are to get a better deal, thanks to a new electronic system which will provide them with a faster and more streamlined service between the ward and X Ray or scanning departments.

Wards and departments log jobs directly onto an electronic screen and porters can then allocate themselves a task. The screen operates on a traffic light system, and lets clinical staff know when patients have been collected, when they are in transit and when they have reached their destination. This is proving so popular that the roll out programme is being expanded and accelerated to more departments across the hospital.

Serco Contract Director at Forth Valley Royal Hospital, Mike Mackay said: "the idea came about from the growing use of touch screen devices entering the home and workplace. We were convinced that we could harness this technology to create one of the first unique systems within the healthcare market. Patients and the wider hospital get a much needed and faster system than ever before. Each task is prioritised according to the clinical urgency and the task is allocated immediately. The transparency that the system provides the service users is the clever bit."