Continuing to See Cisco Momentum in Hospitals

We’re continuing to hear from hospitals of all sizes that they want to leverage their Cisco platforms as the foundation for other mission-critical messaging and communications such as Amcom. Case in point, Rockingham Memorial Hospital (RMH) has a Cisco wireless VoIP foundation and is working with us to address the needs of its mobile staff. This 238-bed hospital in Harrisonburg, Va., is implementing Amcom's encrypted smartphone messaging, Web-based directory / on-call scheduling, and emergency notification solutions. The hospital contact center will also use Amcom's call recording solution to improve call center quality, monitor compliance, and evaluate operator training needs. RMH chose Amcom in part due to its Cisco integration strategy and for its breadth of products that provide the ability to create a succinct communications flow throughout the hospital.

You can read the press release we issued this week to learn more.

Any comments or thoughts on how you’re seeing Cisco used for advanced messaging or workflows today?

Looking Into Our Crystal Ball

Now that 2012 is upon us, and given the new possibilities of smartphones, we assembled a roundtable of industry and technology experts to compile a list of what 2012 will mean for smartphone use in hospitals. We even created a report about it.

The panel believes 2012 will be a transformational year for smartphones in healthcare. 2009-2011 focused on smartphone adoption. 2012 will be very different. It will mark the beginning of an era in which hospitals really figure out how to take these devices beyond their use as individual reference tools and turn them into technology that is truly interconnected throughout the enterprise.

The exciting news is that people are becoming very clever with how to use them in new ways to make meaningful improvements in healthcare. With emerging capabilities far beyond phone calls, email, and even access to medical apps, smartphones have kicked off not only a communications revolution, but a productivity one as well.

So with that, these are the 10 predictions for what we’ll be seeing this year. We’ll know in a few short months whether these are on the money! (If you’d like the full detail on each of these, you can check out the report after a short form).

1. Hospitals will start doing even smarter things with smartphones to make them an essential part of everyday healthcare communications
2. An incident involving compromised protected health information (PHI) on a smartphone will cause headlines and fines
3. The proliferation of different mobile communication devices gets worse
4. Traceability becomes a requirement, not a luxury
5. Pagers RIP? Nope. The prediction of the death of pagers will be proved wrong
6. Specialized communication hardware devices will fail to gain traction
7. Web out, apps in
8. Hospitals raise the “Now What?” question with tablets
9. Hospitals will deliver comprehensive mobile strategies
10. IT and BioMed will join forces in the name of improved workflows

Any thoughts?

Secure Messaging from a Smartphone to Any Other Device at Your Hospital

It’s an exciting time for Amcom because we’ve just announced the latest release of our Amcom Mobile Connect (AMC) product, which offers some amazing new capabilities for hospitals. The most notable enhancement is that a user can communicate with other individuals or groups via encrypted, traceable messages—right from their smartphone or tablet running AMC. Amcom Mobile Connect runs on Apple®, BlackBerry®, and Android® smartphones and tablets, as well as Cisco® tablets and wireless IP phones.

With full authenticated directory access, clinicians or others can send messages to staff running Amcom Mobile Connect on smartphones/tablets, as well as colleagues using pagers, wireless telephones, and other types of devices. As in previous versions of the product, staff can also send messages from Amcom operator consoles, Web directories, emergency notification, and other solutions.

We’re also keeping security top of mind. Amcom Mobile Connect uses industry standard best practices to ensure the protection of sensitive electronic health information in accordance with guidelines from HIPAA and the HITECH Act. This includes a variety of security features, including encryption, application lock, automated message removal, and password-protected inbox. With version 3.0 administrators can complete a remote device wipe to remove Amcom Mobile Connect messages from a smartphone that has been lost or stolen.

These capabilities contrast sharply with the limitations of text (SMS) messaging, which lacks the message traceability and encryption that could lead to a security breach. In fact, the Joint Commission stated on Nov. 10, “No it is not acceptable for physicians or licensed independent practitioners to text orders for patients to the hospital or other healthcare setting. This method provides no ability to verify the identity of the person sending the text and there is no way to keep the original message as validation of what is entered into the medical record.”

You can learn more about Amcom Mobile Connect on our Web site.

As always, your comments are welcome!

The Missing HL7 Link and Smartphones

HL7—Health Level 7—is the standard format for exchanging patient health information between medical applications (created by the not-for-profit organization of the same name). HL7 is a language healthcare organizations understand very well, and they need communications systems that speak it too. Fluently.

But what can we do with it? Amcom Software’s HL7 Link provides automatic notification of critical information like lab results, alarms, and/or patient status. Alerts can include patient information such as name, medical record number, room number, etc. Staff automatically receive the information they need on the correct device.

The effective use of HL7 data to improve care is a potential area of improvement for hospitals. In fact, the Joint Commission has established a National Patient Safety Goal which specifies the need to send important test results to the appropriate staff member on time. It is also very important for hospitals to be able to evaluate the timeliness of these notifications. Amcom Software can help organizations meet this goal by using HL7 data across several systems in novel ways to improve patient care.

Let’s look at an example:

A patient undergoes testing and her lab results are abnormal. The patient’s physician needs to be notified ASAP. The lab technician enters the results into the lab system. Through HL7 integration, once the lab result is entered, it is automatically passed to the Amcom system. Amcom can send the results to the physician on his smartphone. This is done securely and includes an audit trail. With the lab results in hand, the physician determines the patient needs additional medication. He sends a message about the medication and dosage from his smartphone (again, securely and with an audit trail) to the nurse responsible for the patient’s room on her smartphone. The patient receives the medication quickly.

There are many benefits of this for different groups in this scenario. Doctors get proactive notification of critical lab results, meaning they can treat patients with the right procedures or medicine faster. Lab technicians eliminate the time spent manually calling or locating the right physician. The responsibility of reaching the physician is taken off the lab technician, allowing him or her to return to work faster as well.

There are many additional scenarios where this flow of information among systems and people provides great benefit, such as the admit/discharge process and related downstream events, notification about blood products being ready, the availability of particular reports being available, and more.

Hospitals seek every possible opportunity to improve how information flows for the good of patient care and staff efficiency. A link between critical systems and staff goes a long way toward this.

How are you using HL7 in your organization?

Communications Technology Within Reach

Lately we’ve been seeing a lot of smaller hospitals looking at the options for communications technology because they want to better coordinate care for their patients. It’s no secret that better communications, particularly during critical situations, are essential to improved care and safety. In fact, the Joint Commission continually finds in its annual studies that poor communication is the leading cause of sentinel events. But smaller hospitals have historically had challenges finding technology that fits their bed size.

The good news is that rock-solid healthcare communications technology is very much within reach for smaller hospitals today. This not only includes solutions for automating even small call center operations, but also goes far beyond into delivering important communications from staff or even monitoring systems to nurses and doctors who are always on the move.

Here’s a sampling. Embracing Web-based on-call scheduling and employee directories means everyone can access the latest contact information easily. Sending nurse call and patient monitoring system alerts straight to nurses’ mobile devices means less walk time and faster response. Delivering urgent code call or other notifications to clinicians’ smartphones and tablets (or any other device) means greater efficiency in providing informed patient care.

Think of a case like a heart attack patient or car crash victim coming into a rural or community hospital. Making sure the right staff members are contacted quickly is vital, especially when things happen in the middle of the night and staff are home, perhaps some distance from the hospital. Having an up-to-the-minute on-call calendar, the right contact information, and the ability to message quickly to doctors and nurses (likely on smartphones) all plays a role in providing good care.

As always, I’d love to hear your comments.