Calculating early warning scores—A classroom comparison of pen and paper and hand-held computer methods

The ability of the National Early Warning Score (NEWS) to discriminate patients at risk of early cardiac arrest, unanticipated intensive care unit admission, and death

“…EWSs using fewer parameters than NEWS are prone to errors in the inaccurate assignation of individual vital sign parameters to the correct EWS weighting group 27 and the calculation of the total EWS. [28][29][30] On this basis, it might be expected that NEWS would be associated with an increase in operational error over EWS with fewer parameters, but this hypothesis requires testing. Nevertheless, the electronic bedside capture of EWS data, which is increasing throughout the NHS, has been shown to reduce errors in EWS calculation.…”

“…Nevertheless, the electronic bedside capture of EWS data, which is increasing throughout the NHS, has been shown to reduce errors in EWS calculation. 29,30 Additionally, further work regarding the operational effectiveness of any EWS, including NEWS, compared to simpler systems of activating a rapid response team (e.g., single calling criteria 31 or subjective criteria 32 ) needs to be undertaken.…”

Using Electronic Health Record Data to Develop and Validate a Prediction Model for Adverse Outcomes on the Wards

“…This is especially important with the increasing number of patient hand-offs that occur in many hospitals today, as providers often have less first-hand knowledge about the patients they are caring for. Automatic score generation by the EHR would also decrease the error rate in score calculation that occurs even with simpler vital sign-based systems (26,27). It could also be used to send automatic notifications to physicians and the hospital's RRT, circumventing the "failure to call" problem that has been described in the literature (28,29).…”

Early warning systems in the UK: variation in content and implementation strategy has implications for a NHS early warning system

“…15 Computer-based systems are used in around one in 12 London hospitals but have yet to be introduced to acute trusts in Scotland. The merits of computer-based systems are in the speed and accuracy of recording patient observations 16 and in the collation of data to validate and optimise the performance of TTS. 17 As part of the NHS IT programme 'Connecting for health' , it is envisaged that the use of electronic patient records will become more widespread.…”