Column #19: Establishment of nursing IT promotion staff and DXing of nursing operations
St. Marianna University School of Medicine Hospital, located in Miyamae Ward, Kawasaki City, continues to provide cutting-edge medical care as a designated functional hospital. We spoke with Kyoko Motodate, the Deputy Director (also serving as the Director of Nursing), who oversees nearly 1,500 nurses in the nursing department, and Yasuhiko Fujimoto, the Deputy Head Nurse who also works in the IT Strategy Office, about the future of nursing operations.
Celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2021, St. Marianna University School of Medicine established the IT Strategy Promotion Office by hiring ICT specialists since 2016, ahead of this milestone. In 2019, the university formed a strategic partnership with NEC Corporation, aiming to develop a world-class medical ICT model university. Motodate mentioned that the nursing department began a comprehensive review of nursing operations with the renewal of electronic medical records scheduled for 2024. This led to the launch of the "New Nursing Service Construction Project," a business improvement initiative consisting of nine nurses gathered from various sections. It promotes a clear vision of "a workplace where customers are satisfied," emphasizing that nurses working there must be happy.
The project aims to start from a zero base, reevaluating long-standing practices by collecting and organizing ideas from four perspectives: "optimizing workflow," "shortening work hours," "eliminating waste," and "enhancing efficiency." The keywords include not only ensuring the safety and comfort of patients but also "creating time," allowing nurses to focus on their essential duties. For example, since there are many tasks involving writing on paper, proposals have been made to explore the use of voice recognition and image recognition to capture information. Motodate further emphasized the necessity of perspectives from non-nurses and stated that collaboration with members of CHANGE and the Kawasaki Care Design Consortium will lead to innovation in nursing care.
https://kawasaki-sanshinkaikan.jp/sangyo/jyouhou/2025-05/
