A HOSPITAL consultant from Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is in line to win a national award for his work to improve the safety of paediatric patients.

Utah-born, Brad Wilson, developed the paediatric iPhone application, along with a large team of developers and two other emergency medicine consultants from Doncaster and Leeds in a bid to cut the chance of prescribing errors being made by doctors in the emergency department.

Now the team have been short-listed for the technology and IT prize at the Health Service Journal and Nursing Times’ Patient Safety Awards at the Grosvenor Hotel in London on Friday (February 5).

“The iPhone application – Paeds ED – is a decision support tool for paediatric emergencies and has enormous benefits for doctors working under extreme pressure in a demanding environment,“ said Dr Wilson.

“We know that paediatric prescribing errors are a huge problem in A&Es across the country – official figures estimate it to be nearly 20% - but our application helps reduce these mistakes as the phone application electronically works out the right calculations for fluid and drugs after inputing information such as the child’s age  or  weight.

“It then gives you a number of different medical scenarios before working out the correct amount of fluids and drugs needed for each individual child under their own unique set of circumstances.

“This is much better than the old system which meant the doctors having to work out the calculations manually or by reading them off old wall-charts.

“In all, our application helps to save time, reducing stress on the doctor and avoiding prescribing errors for the child.”

In just 5 months since its general release on the i-tunes store, Paeds-ED has has been downloaded by 10,000 users (of free and paid for versions) in 32 countries worldwide.

Dr Wilson – along with his colleagues at iED Ltd – now has plans for a free application for the third world medics which they’re hoping to launch soon.

A download of the application costs £3.99 but there is a free version which holds two modules – key resus and pain modules. For more information click on to www.iedapps.com