1: Delivering Clinical Governance

Guardian provides the full electronic capture of patient information during childbirth including: CTG's, partograms, all labour events, outcome information, fetal blood sampling results and cord blood gas results direct from the blood gas analyser. This information can be shown in real time to enhance communication within and outside the delivery suite to improve patient care and reduce human error. The high integrity of Guardian data means that the audit reports it generates can become one of the main driving forces behind your governance quality approach to care. Guardian has been purposefully developed to a standard sufficient to withstand the rigors of the medical litigation process.

2: Communication - Clinician and Mother

The K2MS Guardian™ system facilitates communication between mother and clinician by providing a focal point for interaction at the bedside. This means that the mother can become more involved in the management of her care.

3: The K2MS Platform™

The K2MS Platform™ is a sleek, ergonomic, robust, medical grade touch screen PC with all electronics fully integrated. No need for an intrusive, cumbersome, heavy trolley which can give an over medicalised impression. It is easy to clean and has been designed to reduce the risk of bio-contamination.

The K2MS Platform™ complies with the medical device standards and can be connected directly to any of the popular fetal monitors. As well as meeting the medical device standards for patient electrical isolation, it also meets the standard in terms of its resistance to the ingress of liquids, flammability rating and mechanical integrity. CONVENTIONAL PCs DO NOT.

4: Guardian Interface

The K2MS Guardian™ user interface has been designed with clinicians. It models current data capture and its presentation is familiar. As such, the K2MS Guardian™ is intuitive. It requires little, if any, training to use. Designed by clinicians for clinicians.

5: Communication - Clinician to Clinician

Conventional fetal monitoring occurs only in the delivery room and it is up to the clinician at the bedside, often the most junior, to involve more senior staff at their discretion. This over-reliance on junior staff has long been recognised as a problem leading to human error. Guardian will communicate all relevant clinical information outside the delivery room to senior staff who can review the patients on the labour ward routinely and efficiently. All information can be considered including CTG's, partograms, annotations, alarms and labour events.

6: Anywhere, Anytime

The central station is an important tool to manage shift changes and ward rounds. It means that only those offering direct care to the mother need enter the room. This review could be from a central location, another bedside, or Consultant’s office.

Consultants on call can dial-in from their home PCs or laptops and review a presentation of a case in a complete and unbiased way. Guardian provides a level of vigilance that helps reduce the risk of human error and provides reassurance to junior staff.

7: Security

Fast, highly accurate capture and authentication of thumb or finger print. The system extensively validates all data input, disallowing data that is in error, but also warning of extreme values that are entered. Data is also checked for consistency within the system data as a whole. As a simple example, if it has been determined that the membranes have ruptured, then a subsequent VE should not indicate that the membranes are intact. An error box will be displayed and the clinician must resolve the inconsistency. This inbuilt intelligence helps ensure data integrity. The system can be run without a keyboard using a touch screen interface, which reduces the size of the computer and removes the problems of contamination and failure of the keyboards etc.

8: Blood Gas Data

The K2MS Guardian™ communicates with K2MS Expert DataCare to obtain all fetal blood sampling results and cord blood gas analysis which are sent straight to the bedside and stored to the database. No transcription errors. Paired cord blood gas analysis, validated by Expert DataCare provides substantial protection from litigation. It has the power to stop litigation before it even gets started.

9: Training

In terms of retrospective learning, cases of interest can be exported from the database and reviewed in group training sessions on any PC.

Reports can also be generated and sent for expert legal review. In addition the actual CTG data can be exported from the database and sent on a disc. With the review software, the experts can interpret the CTG in a prospective way similar to clinical practice which provides a ‘level playing field’.

10: Audit & Reporting

Comprehensive reports can be printed at any time to detail the Unit’s delivery statistics, induction rates, Caesarean section rates, adverse events, outcome according to the 10 groups, cord blood gas data and more. These reports can provide the data to drive the Governance quality of care process.

11: Reliability

Guardian has been designed to be robust technically, such that no single fault can bring it down; not even if the server or network goes down. Patient details can still be entered and central surveillance and dial-in will continue to function with no loss of performance. This enables us to be confident to guarantee an up-time of 99.9% per year.

12: Data Integrity

The K2MS Guardian™ ensures the integrity of your data in the following ways;

• Interfacing with patient administration systems to obtain patient demographic information.  This saves transcription errors and double data entry.
• Clinical information is quick and simple to enter via our touch screen interface and so can be entered contemporaneously at the patient’s bedside.  This also removes the time midwives spend retrospectively entering the data following the birth.
• The user is guided to enter data such that all individual values are within limits, consistent with the other data in the set and sets are consistent with one another.
• No CTG data is automatically assigned to a patient.  The system prompts the clinician to assign the trace to the patient which is fully recorded in the audit trail.