The development of a real-time patient reporting system of drug reactions for improving patient-controlled analgesia medical service quality

Patient-controlled analgesia (PCA) has been widely applied for post-operative pain control which lets the patients' own abilities of self-administration. The evolvement of electronic, information and communication technologies has made the mobile device at the centre of modern life, from work functionality to social communication and entertainment. With the intelligent mobile devices, patients can report the drug reactions immediately. The members of PCA team can get a real-time view of the newest patient reporting information to understand the drug reactions of patients and to perform any necessary treatment timely if it is needed. Thus, a real-time patient reporting system can be used to improve the quality of PCA services, the efficacy of pain management. Therefore, we developed a real-time patient reporting system of drug reactions for PCA services includes the drug reaction reporting, health education of PCA, patient feedback checking and medical televisit. This system is designed by the standard software development process. Through this system, patients who have intelligent mobile devices can offer real-time self-reporting of drug reaction information including pain scores and side effects. PCA team members can online check the patients' feedback information through any devices which have the ability to connect to Internet and then provide appropriate medical management. Additionally, the televisit function can provide PCA team members to enhance the communication with patients. Altogether, this project may efficiently reduce the loading of medical staffs, advance caregiver-patient relationship and improve the quality of medical care.