MetaVision captures and manages thousands of data points in a highly complex environment – capabilities a generic ward electronic health record just can’t provide

About the hospital

Medway NHS Foundation Trust runs Medway Maritime Hospital, a major acute and teaching hospital serving Medway and neighboring areas in north Kent, UK. With around 500 beds, the hospital provides a full range of acute and specialist services, including emergency and critical care, surgery, maternity, and pediatrics. About 100 patients per month are admitted to it s 20-bed ICU. Medway Maritime also supports medical and nursing education, helping to train the next generation of healthcare professionals across Kent and the surrounding areas.

The challenge

In 2015, national guidance requiring electronic healthcare records in critical care led Medway’s ICU to reassess what kind of system it needed to support the growing demands of intensive care. The team compared available critical care-focused systems, to identify which could best support the unit’s requirements. 

The evaluation considered the data-rich critical care environment, where clinicians need rapid access to many parameters and information points. The ICU required a system capable of handling this complexity while supporting local guidelines and evolving safety expectations, so staff could work efficiently and in line with established clinical practice. 

The solution

After comparing several critical care electronic healthcare record systems, Medway’s ICU selected MetaVision as the platform that best met its clinical and operational needs. Its intuitive design and strong user functionality, with “all the different tasks at one’s fingertips” were cited as key advantages. 

A decisive factor was the system’s flexibility. Clinicians could update documentation structures and workflow elements themselves as guidance or expectations changed, keeping the record aligned with daily practice without lengthy development cycles.

Many years later, when the Trust introduced a new hospital-wide electronic health record for the general wards, senior management asked if the ICU could adopt the same system. The e team determined that it was not suitable for the volume and complexity of ICU data. As Dr. Rachel Krol, a Consultant in Critical Care at the hospital, explained, “we wouldn’t have been able to have all the information available to us on a generic ward-based electronic healthcare record.” She added, “I would argue it should be the other way around: perhaps the rest of the hospital could adopt MetaVision because it’s something that’s been tried and tested in our trust since 2015.”

The results

Since adopting MetaVision, Medway’s ICU has seen significant improvements in how clinical information is organized, accessed, and used to support patient care. Clinicians describe the system as both compact and highly adaptable, with Dr. Krol noting that “all the information is there, but it’s incredibly flexible.” This visibility has supported safer and more organized workflows.

Benefits include:

• Strengthened clinical processes – Customizable order sets give staff a structured way to follow expected steps, and the team can easily audit compliance.

• Faster adaptation to new requirements – The ICU can respond quickly when safety incidents or governance reviews require a change in clinical practice. The team can easily update MetaVision to add prompts or revise safety checklists, enabling clinicians to act on new learning without waiting for lengthy development cycles.

• One-stop access to guidelines – The system keeps all clinical guidelines in one, easily accessible, place, helping support consistent decision-making.

Over nearly a decade of use, the platform has proven reliable, contributing to strong user confidence. Looking ahead, Medway’s ICU is preparing to introduce an updated version of MetaVision that offers mobile phone access for clinicians. This will allow staff to receive patient updates and alerts throughout the day, supporting more reactive workflows and timely clinical responses. Dr. Krol sees this as an important step toward enhancing patient safety and further modernizing the way critical care is delivered.

“MetaVision handles so many different data points. It’s so complex that we wouldn’t have been able to have all the information available to us on a generic ward-based electronic healthcare record.”
Dr. Rachel Krol, Consultant in Critical Care, Medway NHS Foundation Trust