Enter Your Email Address to Receive a
Copy of MedicExhange Member Demograhpics

From what I have observed over many years, Hospitals have historically approached medical device connectivity projects as a tactical issue to be dealt with. Up until relatively recently, technology alone could be used to solve the connectivity issue (i.e. getting data from point A to point B) with little to no negative impact on clinical workflow. Further, the scope of connectivity projects has been mainly departmentally focused and deployments have been relatively basic. By basic, I refer to projects that have focused on connecting one or two bedside medical devices to a single CIS application or EMR.

Evidence of all of this can be found by looking back at the past 10 or more years and examining typical implementations of biomedical device connectivity to information systems.

•    Most implementations up to now have been in very specific care areas such as the ICU and OR.

•    Most implementations are relatively small in scope, often in the area of about 20 to 50 beds. Incidentally, for most US hospitals this happens to be about the same number of ICU beds per facility.

•    In the ICU, the key devices that are interfaced are typically multi-parameter patient monitors and sometimes ventilators - but vents to a much lesser degree than monitors.

•    In the OR, the key devices are typically patient monitors and anesthesia/gas machines.

•    Outside of high-acuity care areas, in the general ward there are some limited niche interface solutions for mobile vital signs data capture. Many of these are only semi-automated in terms of truly automating both the data capture and the clinical workflow.

•    For virtually all of these implementations, the data collected from the devices is identified though a mapping of the medical device’s location – that is a bed or room location identifier is used to associate the data and alarms.

•    The device workflow - that is the steps clinicians are required to perform at the bedside to interact with devices to establish connectivity – has been limited. This is because most of the devices are actually fixed to the location – i.e. the monitors in ICU are mounted to the wall and data is interface via a networked gateway with outbound HL7.  Therefore few if any steps are required by clinicians because the devices are permanently tethered to a local PC or terminal server that facilitates the data collection.

But as discussed in some of my previous market trends postings – requirements for connectivity have been changing and in some not so subtle ways. Many hospitals are (more…)

Read More: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MedicalConnectivityConsulting/~3/wX_DhLS28_M/