Health Informatics News

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Study: Incompatible Communication Solutions Burden Nurses Posted: 08 Dec 2009 07:43 AM PST Incompatible communications solutions are making it difficult for hospital-based nurses to effectively communicate with patients and collaborate with care team members, according to a study by Menlo Park, Calif.-based Spyglass Consulting Group . Hospitals are purchasing solutions from different vendors requiring different mobile handsets that operate over different wireless frequencies, says the report, entitled “Point of Care Communications for Nursing.” As a result, nurses must carry multiple devices to address specific job functions, and critical messages, non-critical messages and spam are frequently interspersed. This, says the report, makes it difficult to filter, manage and prioritize communications from team members. More findings from the study are as follows: ·          71 percent of hospital-based nurses indicated their wireless networks were poorly designed resulting in coverage gaps, wireless interference, and overloaded access points; ·          66 percent reported their organizations had deployed VoIP-based communications to provide greater mobility to perform their jobs more effectively at point of care; ·          Hospital-based nurses thought VoIP communications can be disruptive at point of care for those who receive phone calls from team members while performing procedures or treatments; ·          Nurses interviewed believe successful point of care deployments require nursing involvement during the design phases of the IT project.

New eICU Program Focuses on Sepsis Management Posted: 08 Dec 2009 07:41 AM PST Netherlands-based Philips has unveiled the eICU Sepsis Management Program, a component of the Philips Visicu eICU designed to leverage advanced telemedicine monitoring technology and clinical decision support to improve communication among care teams in the treatment of severe sepsis patients, says the company. The eICU Sepsis Management Program provides health systems with the tools to automate and accelerate key steps of severe sepsis screening in order to drive earlier identification and improved sepsis bundle compliance, it claims. The program has been implemented at Banner Desert Hospital, part of Phoenix-based Banner Health, where the company says it has yielded improvements in identifying and treating patients.

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