ANTIGONISH: Two St. Francis Xavier University nursing professors are leading an innovative project that could change the way health care teams communicate and deliver patient care in Nova Scotia and across Canada.
Patti Hansen-Ketchum and Meagan Ryan, both faculty members at the Rankin School of Nursing, are spearheading the development of new digital software designed to keep patient information in one place and make it available to health care workers in real time.
“It is an RN digital-led technology that would be new to Nova Scotia and to Canada,” said Hansen-Ketchum, director of academic programs at the Rankin School. “We’re excited by how this work could improve efficiencies and help optimize the quality of care.”
Currently, nurses and health providers often rely on fragmented systems of communication – notes, faxes, phone calls, or quick hallway conversations – that may not always provide the collaboration or documentation required for seamless patient care.
“There are so many different ways of getting information. It’s not efficient and it doesn’t always get captured in one place,” said Ryan, who also serves as director of student affairs and educational initiatives and teaches digital health courses at StFX.
The new software aims to close these gaps, offering real-time updates that allow care teams to coordinate more effectively while navigating staffing shortages and increasingly complex patient demands.
To support the project, the professors assembled an interdisciplinary team that includes Brittany MacDonald-MacAulay (Human Kinetics), Ryan Reid (Engineering), and James Hughes (Computer Science). Fourth-year nursing student Aidan Murdock is also contributing as a research assistant.
The team has already run simulated patient scenarios in the Rankin School’s Nursing Simulation Lab to test how the technology performs in practice. This fall, they plan to expand testing through an engineering student capstone project and a partnership with a rural long-term care facility, gathering feedback to refine the software. Future trials in additional rural health care settings are also planned.
For Hansen-Ketchum and Ryan, the collaborative aspect of the project has been particularly meaningful.
“They all have such valuable insight,” Ryan said of their interdisciplinary colleagues. “It’s exciting to be working directly with health care partners to ensure the design is informed by the people who will use it.”
As Nova Scotia’s health care system faces mounting pressure, the professors believe this project could provide a much-needed tool to help nurses and care teams deliver better outcomes for patients and families.
“These are real-world issues experienced in every hospital,” Hansen-Ketchum noted. “This project is about bridging those gaps and helping make the system more efficient.”