A Smartphone App for Bedside Recording of Nursing Handovers in Haemodialysis Units Charalampia SOILEMEZI a,1 , Joseph LIASKOS b and John MANTAS b a Faculty of Nursing, School of Health Sciences, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece b Health Informatics Laboratory, Faculty of Nursing, School of Health Sciences, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece Abstract. The purpose of this study is to present the design, development and initial evaluation of a smartphone software (mobile app), for the needs of nursing bedside shift reporting and documentation. The app records and process nursing handovers concerning haemodialysis patient data, and it runs on Android smartphones, offering a structured and friendly user interface. Data are collected, processed, stored and accessed easily, quickly and securely by authorized users. The evaluation, based on discussions and semi-structured interviews with a group of nurses, showed positive feedback on the user interface, structure and functions of the prototype. It can be a useful and efficient tool for the reporting and communication needs between nurses. Conclusions about the limitations of the study and future developments are reported. Keywords. Mobile Applications, Patient Handoff, Point-of-Care Systems, Nursing Informatics, electronic documentation 1. Introduction Nursing shift reports or nursing handovers is the most common means of documenting nursing practice and reporting patient state and care between nurses. They benefit nursing profession, patient care and healthcare system, by promoting the efficient communication between nurses, organizing their work, enhancing their professional relationships and team cohesion, improving patient outcomes, maintaining the continuity of care, reducing errors and risks, and ensuring patient safety [1-3]. Bedside nursing shift report may offer additional benefits, such as relationship building among nurses, increased satisfaction both to nurses and patients, better communication among nurses and patients, more accurate, quick and precise documentation, prioritization of the care for the shift [4]; moreover, it is one of the most crucial functions for nurses, and a critical process in patient care for reducing errors and improving patient safety [3,5]. Reporting quality may vary since it depends on the experience, expectations, workload, relationships of nurses, available time and means for handouts recording [2]. It is common for nursing handovers to include a variety of either concise, structured, formal, standardized, electronic information or rich, rough, handwritten, unstructured, informal notes. The lack of structure in nursing handovers is one of the most important 1 Corresponding Author, Charalampia Soilemezi, MSc, Athens, Greece; Email: hara.soilem@yahoo.com. Public Health and Informatics J. Mantas et al. (Eds.) © 2021 European Federation for Medical Informatics (EFMI) and IOS Press. This article is published online with Open Access by IOS Press and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC 4.0). doi:10.3233/SHTI210256 669