There's an App for That: A Mobile Procedure Logging Application Using Quick Response Codes

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

2018

Publication Title

Western Journal of Emergency Medicine:

Abstract

Background: The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) requires that emergency medicine residents accurately log all procedures, and failure to do this is a frequent source for citations. Studies show that only 60% of procedures performed are eventually logged. Most current web-based procedure logging platforms require accessing a workstation, logging in, selecting the procedure and inputting patient information. This can be cumbersome to implement during a shift, and procedures may not get logged, or are logged inaccurately. We designed a mobile, web-based application that uses Quick Response (QR) codes to input patient information quickly and accurately. Educational Objectives: Design an alternative to web-based procedure logging that increases the logging rate of procedures performed during residency and decreases the transcription errors that occur with traditional data entry. Curricular Design: A mobile-friendly, web-based app was designed to integrate with our procedure log database. It is behind the health care system's secure frewall and maintains the necessary information privacy standards. Users may set the application to automatically log in allowing quick access. The app scans the QR code displayed on each patient's arm band or identifcation sticker, automatically extracting patient name, birthdate, medical record number and sex. The user selects the procedure performed and the app uses data analytics to recommend logging additional procedures (Dialog box: "People who logged this procedure also logged") Source code for our app is freely available for anyone to customize to their requirements. Impact/Effectiveness: A mobile, web-based procedure log application using QR codes allows for portability, decreases the time needed to enter data, and eliminates transcription errors. Average time spent logging a procedure decreased from 79 seconds to 27 seconds after implementation. In addition, typographical errors were found with an error rate of 15% for last name, 9% for age, and 2% for sex when using the traditional web-based method. These errors were eliminated using the mobile application. A similar app can be easily integrated into any residency program in a health care system that has adopted QR code technology for patient identification and is required to maintain a procedure log.

Volume

19

First Page

S40

Last Page

S41

This document is currently not available here.

Share

COinS