K2 Guardian™

What is K2 Guardian?

Guardian provides full electronic capture of patient information during childbirth

Guardian is the first step towards a paper-light maternity department. All clinical data is captured at the bedside via the K2MS touchscreen and stored direct as part of the patient record, ready for audit and reporting such as CNST.

Guardian Delivers Clinical Governance

Guardian can capture CTGs, partograms, 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.

Real-time Update of Care

Guardian incorporates an intelligent electronic Chalkboard which is called the SaFERR Births Board. SaFERR stands for, Situation and Features, Evaluation, Risks and Requirements and presents a dynamic real-time update of care for all women on Labour Ward. Importantly, all information presented on the SaFERR Births Board has been automatically transmitted from each of the bedside clinical notes. As well as communicating the Situation and Features of each labour, it also presents the specific patients risks and future care planning information. We believe that the SaFERR Births Board, in its own right, represents a major risk reduction technology.

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.

The K2MS Portal™

The K2MS Portal 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 Portal 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.

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.

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 log in remotely using a PC or laptop and review a presentation of a case in a complete and unbiased way. Also accessible from anywhere in the world via smartphone or tablet, using wifi or the mobile cellular network, real-time patient CTGs, partograms and notes are available to any authorised professional. Guardian provides a level of vigilance that increases communication, helps reduce the risk of human error and provides reassurance to junior staff.

Communication – Midwife to 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.

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.

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’.

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.

Reliability

K2MS Guardian has been designed to be technically robust. 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.

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.