The “Intelligent Hospital™” - A Holistic Overview
Over the last decade the complexity of workflows focusing on patient care coupled with the interaction with multiple clinical devices, systems and clinical applications have driven the need for increased device interconnectivity, integration with IS platforms, and enhanced communications. These integrations enable data to be shared and rapidly delivered to the point of care, as well as archived in patient EMR flow sheets. This complex interconnectivity has clearly identified the need for accurate patient centric identification and association driving the need to integrate bar-coding, and RTLS technologies into the patient care environment to support these functions. Device connectivity integrated with RTLS systems are used to establish the dynamic relationships between patients, care providers and the devices connected to the patient. This enables the rapid filtering, processing and delivery of critical information directly to a variety of hand-held devices carried by the care provider at the point of care as well as to clinical data archives, such as the medical record. This delivery methodology optimizes and enhances workflow, patient care and safety enabling dynamic monitoring and rapid response to critical issues. These devices and applications rely on a combination of network and wireless technologies, which includes a combination of system dedicated frequencies, along with standardized communication protocols, such as Wi-Fi (802.11), ZIGBEE.
The “Intelligent Hospital” showcase is created to help raise the level of awareness and to educate the healthcare industry on the many applications of RFID and RTLS technologies integrated within the clinical scenarios. Visitors to the pavilion see first-hand how these technologies are able to deliver real time data from the patient’s room/bedside to the clinicians smart mobile devices, thus providing care givers with real time visibility of people, assets, and processes. When properly implemented, RFID and RTLS can have a tremendous impact on patient safety and on the quality of care delivered while at the same time reducing operating expenses. The “Intelligent Hospital” is a dynamic simulator enabling the visualization of how complex clinical devices can be coupled with layers of inter-connectivity, integrated with RFID and RTLS and deliver critical information via multiple communication options, within the:
The “Intelligent hospital” demonstrates both centralized and distributed methods of managing physiological data and alarms along with coordination of information from remote environments like patients’ home or nursing home. The OR supports the traditional infrastructure providing procedure tables, surgical lighting, equipment booms and complex monitoring. The anesthesia and monitoring platforms are integrated with supporting clinical devices and applications providing a comprehensive wall of knowledge overview of the environment, patient and procedure status. Localized patient side monitoring used in conjunction with minimally invasive surgical platforms dynamically demonstrate access and display medical record information along with real time procedural images required for these procedures. The room integrates with various implementations of RTLS and RFID to enable identification, tracking of OR staff, surgical instruments, and medications and supplies, along with dynamic reporting of these critical assets. The patient care areas, both ICU and ambulatory (Step Down) areas demonstrate state of the art clinical devices that are integrated through a combination of connectivity and RTLS / RFID solutions to dynamically transfer physiological data to the medical record. Simultaneously delivered critical parameters and alarms are sent directly to the appropriate care providers at the point of care. A variety of handheld devices demonstrate enabling delivery of text messages, waveforms, along with either VoIP and mobile cell staff to staff communications. The ICU additionally incorporates bedside devices providing medication administration, sample collection and laboratory devices at the point care, enabling seamless diagnostic and blood gas and chemistry analysis. Overarching visualization and dashboards are used to dynamically monitor the status of the patient and environment. The demonstration enables barcode and RFID coupled patient centric identification to be used enabling device or clinical data association, medication administration, sample collection and verification of supplies and pharmaceuticals used in patient care delivery. RTLS also demonstrates how to ensure compliance and security including, hand hygiene, infant protection, staff emergency and duress and equipment shrinkage reduction. Within the Emergency and Ambulatory settings of the “Intelligent Hospital” the use of telemetry, vital signs monitoring coupled with various identification technologies demonstrates the workflows and issues within these areas as compared to the OR and ICU settings. The issues of patient identification, triage and rapid clinical data for assessment and evaluation rely on the integration of advanced devices and diagnostic information. In this setting timing can play a critical role, the delivery of physiological information from a patient in transit can vital in the evaluation and decision process Finally, the “Intelligent Hospital” demonstrates two distinct methodologies for managing patient data; a distributed architecture acquiring from and delivering information directly to the care provider at the point of care and a centralized war room approach. The war room demonstrates a consolidated institutional view of all patients and events enabling trained staff to manage and prioritize critical events and information dissemination. The war room also enables external patient information and status from nursing homes, home care systems and hospice to be centrally displayed, managed, evaluated and distributed. In summary the showcase demonstrates clinical scenarios and use cases which exemplify the integration of key technologies and applications including:
|
               |
Improving patient care, safety, and operating efficiencies with … Auto-Id, RFID, RTLS, Sensors, and Wireless Technologies