Hospitals using ICNET for Covid infection surveillance

NEWS - eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth

Ten hospitals across the country are using the ICNET clinical surveillance platform, including new functionality for Covid-19.

Canterbury District Health Board deployed ICNET, developed by Baxter Healthcare, in 2012. Over the past two years it has worked with ACC and Baxter to roll it out to another nine DHB Infection Prevention Teams.

The software provides real time surveillance designed to prevent, detect and advise on infections such as Covid-19. 

Susan Wood, director quality and patient safety for Canterbury and West Coast DHBs, says the initial requirement was for software that would track and prevent ‘everyday’ hospital-acquired infections such as Norovirus.

“We have always been mindful since H1N1 flu hit in 2009, that we would need to be able to capture real-time information in another pandemic,” Wood says.

In March last year, new functionality was developed to support hospitals in handling Covid-19 surveillance. 

Ten hospitals across New Zealand are now linked in to the ICNET database, creating a coherent response to detect, manage and trace Covid-19 cases across the national hospital network, including the hotel quarantine network, says Wood.

Lakes DHB clinical nurse specialist, Waverley Brinkler, says that since its implementation in late 2019, ICNET has revolutionised the way clinicians at her DHB access, store and analyse laboratory and patient data in a systematic way.

“Clusters or outbreaks can be recognised quickly, by identifying groups of organisms in similar locations, again enabling interventions to be implemented as soon as possible,” she says.

“ICNET was very useful during Covid-19 as it created a list of Covid-19 test results by location, which alerted us to any positive results and enabled us to measure whether we were reaching our local testing targets.”

Racquel Lewis, infection prevention and control advisor at Hawkes Bay DHB says ICNET was “turned on” during the Covid-19 response at her DHB.

“It’s been fantastic for the hospital space and the public heath team, as well as our occupational health team for surveillance and swabs,” she says.

Steven Flynn, general manager Baxter Australia and New Zealand, says New Zealand is one of the first countries globally to rapidly deploy Covid-19 functionality to the ICNET network.