Hywel Dda Health Charities has helped fund an ambitious 18-month project that has seen 65 state-of-the-art cardiac monitors to Withybush Hospital in Pembrokeshire.

The networked cardiac monitors have been installed across eight clinical areas with six fully integrated diagnostic central stations. Hywel Dda Health Charities have funded the extension of the telemetry cardiac monitoring system to wards one, three, four and puffin ward.

The monitors will reduce the need to move patients around the hospital and enable them to be cared for in the most appropriate setting.

The clinical pathway starts at the Emergency Department where patients are admitted onto a cardiac monitoring station. The full patient electrocardiogram (ECG) demographics are continually recording and every second of data is seamlessly uploaded to the central station. This includes the time spent in A&E and the journey between departments, as if the patient had been in the cardiac ward the whole time. This detailed timeline can be analysed at any time by cardiologists. Previously, the data would have only been available from when the patient arrived at the cardiac ward.

Monitors can be viewed in any department from the cardiac ward central stations or any monitor on the medical network. The cardiologist can view a patient monitor from a mobile phone or tablet from anywhere in the world.

Patients who are mobile can be monitored in detail from the cardiac central station without being restricted to a bed area by cables. Patients are connected to a small telemetry transmitter the size of a mobile phone, which they carry around with them. They have the flexibility to meet relatives on the ground floor or outside the front of the hospital whilst being monitored at the central station in the cardiac ward.

Dr. Nikolaos Anatoliotakis, Consultant Cardiologist, said: "This has been the biggest innovation in patient monitoring for our hospital since a very long time.We’re all very proud of this benchmark innovation and would like to thank everyone for all of the hard work that was put into this project."