Broomwell Wins Award for Life Saving Telemedical ECG Monitoring

HSJ awards Broomwell Healthwatch 1st place for its innovative telemedical ECG monitoring service, which could save hundreds of lives and the NHS up to £100M each year

[UKPRwire, Thu Nov 22 2007] NHS North West and Lancashire and South Cumbria Cardiac Network together with Broomwell Healthwatch have won the HSJ award for its telemedical ECG monitoring service, which could save the NHS hundreds of millions annually and at the same time vastly improve the quality of delivery of services to patients.

The award won was for the category of Improving Care with E-Technology. The advanced cardiac telemedical monitoring service has demonstrated it could significantly reduce unnecessary cardiac referrals to hospital emergency and outpatients units and thus generate vast savings for the NHS.

NHS North West, Lancashire and South Cumbria and Broomwell Healthwatch impressed the judges with their project, which was praised as being well governed and a good all-round proposition with quality outcomes and cost savings.

Joshua Rowe, CEO for Broomwell Healthwatch commented: “We are absolutely delighted with the result and it’s fantastic to be recognised for our contribution to cardiac care from such a respected organisation as the HSJ. I believe the time for telemedicine has finally come. I believe that if rolled out on a national level, telemedical ECGs could transform the model of cardiac care across the country….’

”Telemedicine, in effect, imports ECG expertise into every surgery, via the telephone. It is great for patients because of the convenience and because of the immediacy of diagnosis. It is great for GPs because it enables them to make a better-informed diagnosis and significantly reduce waiting times and it is great for the NHS because it saves them an absolute fortune….’

NHS North West together with the Lancashire and South Cumbria cardiac network saw the potential for the NHS, early on, and helped shape the service and quality of delivery. As a result, many PCTs in the region have adopted the system.

Broomwell’s advanced cardiac monitoring service has also recently been selected by the NHS National Technology Adoption Hub for healthcare, as one of the three advanced healthcare solutions to promote across the UK.

Based in Manchester Royal Infirmary the newly formed Hub has been set up to ensure that NHS patients across England will benefit from new, cost-effective, life-saving technologies such as the 12 lead ECG telemedicine service from Broomwell, and will examine how the technologies can be put into practice in the quickest, most effective way to improve NHS productivity by lowering the cost and operational burden on acute and emergency care providers.

Earlier in 2007 a NHS North West six-month pilot of Broomwell’s telemedical monitoring services involving 15 GP practices and two NHS walk-in centres, recruited with the support of the Lancashire and South Cumbria Cardiac Network, took place in Cumbria and Lancashire.

The pilot demonstrated the potential to save 90,000 A&E visits, 45,000 hospital admissions and hundreds of lives each year in England. The pilot’s results also estimated the minimum savings to the NHS from use of telemedical ECG tests are £46M per year, simply by cutting unnecessary hospital admissions for symptoms of chest pain.

Broomwell believes far larger savings are easily achievable. The Lancashire and South Cumbria report focused on savings by avoiding referrals to A&E. However, if one considers potential savings in avoiding referrals to outpatient clinics, as well as telemedical applications for monitoring cardiac patients at home, (for post operative or post MI patients or for ‘frequent visitors’), weight monitoring for CHF patients, Peak flow and SPo2 monitoring for a large number of patients, the potential savings run into hundreds of millions.

The Broomwell Healthwatch telemedical service is now being operated by virtually all of the PCTs in the Greater Manchester region, PCTs in Cumbria and Lancashire, Somerset PCT, Southampton PCT, HM prisons and numerous other health screening organisations. The Monitoring service can easily cope with users throughout the country.

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How the BroomWell Healthwatch telemedicine ECG service works
Broomwell Healthwatch gives GPs and other healthcare professionals access to immediate, expert interpretation of ECGs by experienced cardiology-trained clinicians. Broomwell’s hand-held 12-lead ECG machine is used by a nurse, clinician or paramedic in the same way as a conventional machine. When the ECG is complete, it is transmitted as a sound signal by landline telephone or by fax in just 45 seconds to Broomwell’s monitoring centre, where it is displayed on screen for interpretation by experienced clinicians.

Based on the high-quality ECG trace, Broomwell staff give an immediate verbal interpretation by phone so that action can be taken quickly, if needed. A full written ECG report is also sent to the GP surgery by email or fax for inclusion in the patient record. Because constant communication with the patient’s doctor, nurse or paramedic is maintained during the test, the quality of patient care is high.

About BroomWell Healthwatch
The company was established in 2004 to provide telemedical monitoring services to GPs, Walk-in Centres, Community Hospitals and private individuals. Broomwell’s solutions include the wristwatch-like MiniClinic, which is linked to the company’s monitoring centre by a home base station, 12-lead portable ECGs, and weight control solutions for congestive heart failure. These are supported by Broomwell’s 24-hour cardiac monitoring centre, which is staffed by experienced cardiology-trained clinicians giving immediate, expert interpretation of ECGs.

www.broomwellhealthwatch.com

Press contacts: Craig Coward / Luke Ford 01625 511 966

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