UZ Leuven is one of Belgium's most renowned academic hospitals. Associated with the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, UZ Leuven has five campuses with 1995 beds and 8,800 employees. It was the first Belgium hospital with a Joint Commission International Quality Approval in 2010.

For a firsthand experience of UZ Leuven's clinical excellence, we take a tour into its busiest department - the ER.

The Emergency Department of UZ Leuven receives 55,000 patients per year, most of them in critical conditions. This requires clinicians to make quick diagnosis for the right treatment, in which every piece of patient information counts. What they need is far more than a heart rate or blood pressure, but some of the most advanced monitoring parameters. Let's find out what modern technology has brought for ER clinicians at UZ Leuven.

The ER is where the most contingencies happen in a hospital. Clinicians must be prepared at all time. The more patient information they can access in limited time, the better they can make clinical decisions with confidence.

"The system makes my work easier because when I look at the monitor I can see all the information of the patients in one glimpse." commented UZ Leuven's Paramedic Gwen Pollaris on the Mindray BeneView Patient Monitoring System installed in the Emergency Department.

BeneView's powerful IT solution integrates patient data into a seamless data flow. Already in the ambulance, paramedics connect the patient to the Mindray monitoring system via the T5 and T1 monitors, this ensures immediate connection to the central system at the hospital. From that moment on, all patient data will be collected under one name so that wherever the patient goes, clinicians always have all the information at hand.

The more streamlined their workflow is, the better clinicians can deal with the hassles under emergency circumstances. Professor Sandra Verelst, Consultant of the Emergency Department UZ Leuven, said the BeneView Patient Monitoring System is great help to her staff.

Being a transport hub in a hospital, the ER is connected to the ambulances, shock rooms and other in-hospital units like the ICU and General Ward. An efficient patient transport solution is necessary to ensure patient safety.

For this, Chief Nurse Peter Deboutte has the answer. "It is easy for all the nurses that the same T1 monitor can go in all the departments." said Nurse Deboutte.

With a 5” touchscreen, BeneView T1 is both an independent compact patient monitor as well as a plug-in module that can be connected with a BeneView host monitor such as the T5. The same T1 remains with the patients throughout their stay in hospital even when they are being moved across departments and different levels of care intensity.

"We don’t have to alter the system to another transport monitoring system because we are just taking the small T1, put it on the bed and we can click it in, for instance, in the radiology room where we’ve got a large monitoring system again. It saves a lot of time." said Professor Verelst.

The BeneView system provides UZ Leuven with improvements to patient safety and increased efficiency for both the doctors and the nursing staff, making them feel more confident in their daily work.

Special thanks to:
Professor Sandra Verelst, Consultant, Emergency Department
Peter Deboutte, Chief Nurse, Emergency Department
Gwen Pollaris, Paramedic, Emergency Department
UZ Leuven