SickKids is making the switch from physical pagers to smartphones

The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) is working towards eliminating the use of physical pagers following the deployment of a cell phone-based communication, collaboration and on-call scheduling system, all powered by Hypercare.

Pagers are still being carried by certain teams across the hospital including physicians and nurses on Code Blue and Code Trauma teams, but SickKids’ hopes to phase them out in the future, according to Dr. Karim Jessa, chief medical information officer at SickKids.

“We hope to eventually eliminate the use of pagers, but we first have to make sure that we have the necessary Wi-Fi and cellular coverage because sometimes in old facilities like ours there are dead spots in diagnostic imaging areas or in stairwells to parking lots,” he said. For all other paging and communication needs, Hypercare is the go-to solution.

The powerful communication and collaboration platform houses the on-call schedules for more than 100 departments with contact information allowing users to message each other directly. “That’s what makes it really easy,” said Dr. Jessa, an emergency medicine physician who also does shifts in the hospital’s Emergency Department (ED). “You don’t have to call locating or switchboard. You don’t have to ask the ward clerk. You know who’s on-call and you can reach out right from your cell phone.”

Contact information for on-call staff was loaded into Hypercare and at SickKids’ request new fields were added, including each individual’s office location, badge number, department affiliation, administrative assistant contact information and fax number.
SickKids started looking for a new communication solution in 2022 to replace an old system that was built in-house using dated technology that is no longer supported. . The on-call schedules were published and used by ward clerks or locating staff to page out to on-call docs. “We had been using it for 20 years and it was getting to the end of life, so we needed something different,” Dr. Jessa said.

Other vendors responding to SickKids’ RFP were able to offer an on-call scheduling system but couldn’t provide a solution that would work alongside their existing pager network. Hypercare was able to satisfy both requirements. That was important because SickKids opted for a phased deployment that began in May 2024 with Hypercare housing the on-call schedule but still using physical pagers as the means of communication.

When phase two of the deployment occurred in the fall, cell phones equipped with the Hypercare app took over as the primary means of communication, allowing the hospital to offload a large number of physical pagers. There are currently more than 3,500 active Hypercare accounts at the hospital, which includes physicians, residents, nurses and administrative users. Over 80,000 Hypercare messages and 15,000 pages are delivered monthly through the platform.

Hypercare is also integrated with SickKids’ Everbridge emergency communication system, which uses pagers to connect with Code Blue and Code Trauma teams. Auditing functionality built by Hypercare also provides confirmation that pages have been successfully transmitted.

Dr. Jessa cites several advantages that Hypercare offers as a means of communication in a busy hospital environment. “With pagers, you don’t know if a page that’s coming through is about a life-threatening issue or if it’s an order for acetaminphen,” Dr. Jessa said. Using Hypercare, the sender is able to identify the importance or urgency of a message. The recipient knows if it’s a stat message or something less urgent that can be dealt with later in the day.

There is also an urgent alert function that allows users to prioritize emergency messages and even override smartphone silent and do not disturb settings. Structured message templates are also accommodated to ensure complete information is included for specific scenarios, such as physician callback requests for internal and external calls.

Another important advantage is that the sender of the message knows it has been received and seen. “With pagers, you don’t know, so you end up calling again and again if there’s no response. Using Hypercare, you can also escalate a message if necessary to someone else who is on-call.”

Senders can also securely attach photos or documents to their messages. “A trainee, for example, might attach a photo of a patient’s rash or send a photo of an X-ray showing a bad break to a staff physician, and it’s secure,” Dr. Jessa said. “You can’t do that with a pager, so that’s another benefit.”

Team activation notifications are being dispersed through Hypercare, alerting health-care providers via pagers and Hypercare’s own messaging platform with data from the on-call schedule to streamline communication for users during emergency responses and patient transfers facilitated by the Acute Care Transport Service team. This integration aims to improve the speed and reliability of critical alerts, ensuring that teams can respond effectively in life-saving scenarios.

SickKids is also considering Hypercare’s on-call scheduling marketplace feature that allows on-call staff to trade shifts in the event of a family emergency or sickness. Currently, requests for scheduling changes are channeled through the hospital administrators.

Hospital staff accustomed to the convenience of using cell phones outside the hospital and in their personal lives have welcomed the acquisition of Hypercare and are not sorry to give up their physical pagers.

“There aren’t very many hospitals in Canada that have completely gotten rid of pagers,” said Dr. Jessa. “I know some of the bigger pediatric hospitals in the U.S. are moving toward complete pager elimination, and I think it’s just a matter of time until we can get rid of them.”

Hypercare is now deployed as a communication and on-call scheduling application at more than 30 hospitals across Canada. The deployment at SickKids is the company’s largest customer to date in Canada, said Hypercare CEO Albert Tai.