Empowering the Medical Professional. Handheld Computers and Wireless Connectivity: Optimizing the Health of the Health Care Industry

Transcription

1 Empowering the Medical Professional Handheld Computers and Wireless Connectivity: Optimizing the Health of the Health Care Industry

2 Bringing the Health Care Industry into the Future The Challenges Facing the Health Care Industry Accurate and up-to-date data is paramount for physicians to successfully treat their patients. A written diagnosis misread, a record lost in mounds of papers, or time-sensitive information in piles of documentation waiting for processing can impact the way in which a physician can deliver timely treatment to his patient and can make a difference in a patient s health outcome. The challenges that face healthcare industry s ability to carry out its mission are numerous: 1) Physicians patient notations improperly deciphered or erroneously input into medical record keeping systems result in costly and cumbersome report processing. Quality patient care can suffer. Records may have to be edited or re-entered adding to the cost. Corrections and changes to patient information make it less reliable. 2) Hundreds of thousands of patient fatalities and injuries occur due to the errors in the administration of prescription medication. These errors result in the loss of billions of dollars annually for the health care industry and costs for lawsuits. With thousands of drugs and drug combinations on the market for doctors to choose from and prescribe, human processing errors markedly increase. 3) Use of paper-based reporting processes to deliver critical medical transportation and response services result in lost income for transportation providers. Inconsistent patient information duplicated between the providers and hospitals, most often on illegible carbon copies, add to the cost of providing medical services. Quality services and the health concerns of patients can be compromised. Emergency professionals need accurate patient information to the hospital prior to the patient s arrival. 4) A dependency on paper-based medical records, surgical reports, and lab test results by physicians and health care workers adding unnecessarily to an already overloaded work schedule. Patient information can be mishandled while health care workers spend more time reprocessing documents. Using manual storage and retrieval methods increases the potential of misplaced documents and compromises patient confidentiality. Not only does this consume an enormous amount of time, it takes away from what the health care worker was trained to do - provide care for patients. 5) Improper collection (and recollection) of a myriad of diagnosis codes result in lost revenue charges. With the complex and ever changing rules and regulations in the billing process, many health care professionals downcode in order to avert denials in charges and insurance audits. This results in lost revenue to medical institutions and decreased compensation to medical professionals. 6) Inconvenient and time-consuming access to medical reference documentation result in medical students spending less time on direct patient care and learning. Timely healthcare information is needed immediately in the clinical or hospital operations. Health care professionals cannot afford to spend more time trying to find the appropriate information and resources for their patients.

3 Innovations in Portable Computing Empowers Health Care Empowering caregivers requires three basic yet critical components, as illustrated in Figure ) Portable Devices: The recent handheld computing phenomenon and the maturing of the Internet is now playing a key role in eliminating the challenges mentioned above facing the health care industry. Deployment of handheld computers (HPCs) and personal digital assistants (PDAs) with network access is advancing the goal of providing the highest quality medical care. Devices running Palm s PalmOS and Microsoft s Pocket PC have literally placed the power of immediate and accurate information in the hands of medical professionals. 2) Software Applications: An increasing number of medical software applications able to run on these devices are becoming available. Through local area network and Internet synchronization to networked database servers these applications help physicians download and capture critical clinical data, service charges, prescribe proper medication, and document essential patient information accurately and timely. Nurses and medics easily record vital statistics and deliver the correct services and medication to the correct patients. 3) Network Access: Enabling the portable devices to connect to the network to avail of the software applications is the crucial third component to empower the caregivers. As physicians, nurses and other care givers spend a larger percentage of their time on patient care than at their desks, network access products are now available that can be cost effectively deployed at MANY conveniently locations. These network access points must meet four important criteria. Easy to deploy: Network Access products must be easy to deploy and should integrate seamlessly with the facilities infrastructure. Cross facility access: The Access products must allow care givers to access information from a wide variety of locations within the facility and also from other facilities as physicians often work at hospitals and clinics. Non-Interfering: Healthcare facilities must be satisfied that network access products will not interfere with the facilities patient care equipment. Cost effective: Cost is often a factor of time to deployment, cost of incremental products for each caregiver and cost of access points.

4 Handheld PDAs Notebook Multi-platform portable devices Network access products (Ethernet, Infrared) Firewall Ethernet Internet Healthcare Software Synchronization Server Remote Servers Database Servers Figure 1.0: Components of healthcare empowerment MercuryMD and Clarinet Systems: Transforming Health Care Coupling the dynamic health care solution of MercuryMD with the power and mobility of Clarinet Systems EthIR LAN provides the tools for medical professionals to simplify the tasks and streamline the collect ion and dissemination of data that was heretofore a futuristic ideal. The future is here and ready for deployment in the health care industry that truly promises to transform it into a productive and efficient system. Working with healthcare facilities, Clarinet Systems and Mercury MD are playing a pivotal role in enabling medical professionals in adopting the palm-sized computer as an invaluable weapon against paper work and record processing inefficiencies. As illustrated in figure 2.0.

5 Staging Database Sync Hubs MCentral MConduit Enterprise Clients Enterprise Server Figure 2.0: Content palm-sized computers through Clarinet Systems, EthIR LAN MercuryMD is able to provide precisely what physicians require to carry out their daily rounds and functions. Developed to seamlessly integrate with existing legacy hospital data systems, the MecuryMD solution is fully HIPAA* Compliant and with the existing and proposed regulations on security. MercuryMD provides financial-grade 128 bit RSA security in data transfer within the network to the device and the data is encrypted on the device using Certicom s best-of-breed handheld security gives the physician the data they need that fits into their workflow all without changing the structure or content of these existing systems. This is accomplished by creating usable technology to simplify the complex interaction between patient data and the physician as shown in Figure 3.0. Until now there was no easy or consistent way of delivering clinical data to a physician except by tracking down slips of paper or using various computing systems each working differently. Innovators like MercuryMD and Clarinet Systems a physician can now walk into a hospital and synchronizes his palm to the hospital s network database server receiving updated patient lists, receive data relative to his patients including lab, radiology results, pharmacy needs, patient census information, dictated reports and other critical information. No need to track down papers, folders, documents, or use various computing systems. Now physicians can obtain this data securely and quickly using the MercuryMD and Clarinet Systems solution which integrates stable wireless handheld enterprise technology and web-enabled scalable database technology. It delivers critical and up-to-date data right into palm-sized handhelds which most physicians already own. And since only the physician has access to this data all the patient information is there no separate computers to access data everything is contained in an intuitive, ergonomic, easy to navigate interface and simple enough to speedily request and retrieve time-sensitive information.

6 Legacy Systems Radiology Labs Dictation Pathology Micro HL7 Parser & Interface Engine MInterface MCentral Pharmacy Pt Info Staging Database Figure 3.0 The MercuryMD and Clarinet Systems solution is appropriate for any data intensive medical environment. Their enterprise integration of handheld devices into clinical workflow is designed to solve inefficiencies in patient care. Spending hours a day finding, collating, and transcribing data onto cards or printouts is not only a tremendous waste of the physician s time, it s a waste of hospital resources. The power of MercuryMD s system is drawn equally from MData, the handheld application, and from MCentral, the staging database. MData has an intuitive user interface that is simple and easy-to-use, even for the physician technophobe. MercuryMD s entire system would simply be another handheld application without its patent-pending, ergonomic interface architecture and design. The UI appeals to physicians, however, also because it delivers patient data directly from the hospital. This data is made accessible through MCentral s integration with the hospital s multiple disparate databases. MCentral integrates to the hospital information system through the MInterface HL7 parser and interface engine. This is the plug part of MercuryMD s patent-pending backend plug and play technology. MCentral buffers the hospital databases from direct queries by the handheld devices that may result in system corruption. It holds all the data acquired on patients while they are in the hospital and provides it to MData. When working in the mobile hospital environment, the healthcare provider can use any Palm OS device to sync via infrared at MercuryMD s patent-pending synchronization hubs. These hubs contain Clarinet s infrared hardware and are located strategically throughout the hospital in highly trafficked locations. At synchronization, the user points his Palm device toward the infrared hub, logs in through the MData user interface, and notifies MCentral through the secure MConduit enterprise client server. The user is cleared via his secure login and device ID, and the data on all of the user s patients are downloaded to the handheld device quickly and easily through Clarinet Systems infrared technology. The data provided to MCentral from the hospital systems through MInterface is secure, up-to-date, and real-time. In information intensive environments physicians must have mobile access to a wide range of accurate patient data delivered directly to them in a fast and secure manner and this is easily accomplished with Clarinet Systems EthIR LAN products.

7 The EthIR LAN system is platform independent and can be managed and configured on a network like any other switch. The EthIR Switch comes in a single port version suitable for small installations or multiport units that fit easily into a data closet providing either infrared or Ethernet connectivity to network wall jacks enterprise wide. The EthIR Switch with EthIR Beam infrared network access points provides a finite number of network access points that can be shared by an infinite number of users. EthIR LAN is an extremely cost effective solution compared to Ethernet LAN cards or RF wireless LANs since network connectivity is achieved via the infrared communications port that is a standard feature of virtually every portable PC today. This eliminates the need for medical professionals, or the institution, to purchase any additional hardware such as expensive low power PCMCIA LAN cards to gain access to the network. EthIR LAN is designed to use the existing LAN wiring infrastructure which significantly reduces installation costs compared to RF wireless LANs and at the same time provides better performance. The EthIR LAN family of products can be deployed through an entire enterprise using the multi-port products in the wiring closet. Connected to the Ethernet hub, these products integrate seamlessly, while the single port can be plugged in to any ether net jack to provide immediate connectivity. Who benefits? Everyone. Patients receive better healthcare and the potential for misdiagnosis through paper-based data collection is greatly minimized. Physicians, nurses, medical students are less bogged down by chasing papers and have more quality time for their patients. IT professionals who are freed from massive user support needs, security issues, and the support of expensive equipment by having health care professionals actually participate in the collection, storage, and retrieval of data which is where it should actually com from right from the source. Hospitals and medical institutions have an improved workflow, happier medical professionals, superior patient outcomes, better allocation of resources and increased revenue generation.

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