E-sepsis: early detection and treatment helping to save lives
Digital tools are making NHS staff’s working lives easier, improving patient care and the staff experience, helping them work more safely, more effectively and efficiently.
The reduction of mortality from sepsis, a serious and frequently occurring condition, across the NHS, is an example of how early recognition and treatment with digital tools can save lives.
E-Sepsis is a clinical decision support tool to increase screening for Sepsis and subsequent antibiotic administration. E-Sepsis sees integration of a number of clinical parameters including patient observations and laboratory results. It automatically alerts clinicians when it detects a patient with sepsis. This removes the need for manual intervention and e-sepsis prompts clinical action by the clinical member of staff treating the patient. E-Sepsis ensures that screening for sepsis happens automatically, irrespective of ward, time of the day and clinician looking after the patient. Sepsis is monitored at individual, ward and Trust level – at any point in time, the Trust has an integrated view of the care of sepsis patients, and importantly are able to identify them as having sepsis much earlier and use this data to support improvement.
The tool has been developed in-house by the Trust’s digital team and works seamlessly with other systems in use by the Trust.
As a result of implementing the e-Sepsis decision support tool, in tandem with electronic observations and lab results, there are some remarkable improvements in managing Sepsis. These are:
- Screening for sepsis is consistently now at 100% for the Emergency Department (ED) and wards
- Antibiotic administration for patients with sepsis within 1 hour has increased to 90% in ED and 60% on wards.
- Mortality for sepsis has reduced from 23.17% to 22.92% 5%, severe septic shock mortality from 55.3% – 43.62%, severe sepsis mortality from 46.47% to 38.21%
- Septic shock mortality in under 45s has reduced from 60% to 7.69%
The above results to up to 200 lives saved through e-Obs, e-NEWS and e-Sepsis at Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust.
To access the Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust E-Sepsis blueprint, please email england.gdeblueprints@nhs.net.
Created by NHS Trusts, blueprints are step-by-step guides explaining how particular systems or innovations were developed and introduced and can be tailored to meet local requirements. They outline what’s needed to deliver the benefits of technology and lasting digital change e.g.; organisational leadership, technical guidance and clinical and staff engagement.