A report released by CSC, Falls Church, Va., highlights six technologies that have the potential to create a better working environment for nurses and other care providers, as well as enhance the quality of patient care.
In the article, “Beyond E-Health Records: Technologies That Enhance Care Delivery”, Fran Turisco research principal and Jared Rhoads, senior research analyst for Emerging Practices in CSC's healthcare group, highlight six technologies:
- Workflow management systems – increase efficiencies by collecting information from multiple sources and integrate it into a single display. At Catholic Health West in Nevada, the enterprise-wide system enabled nurses to offer on-the-spot transportation to other facilities where patients would receive immediate care.
- Real-time location systems (RTLS)--used to locate equipment, patients and staff. The system’s positioning algorithms locate assets and display their location online using a map of the unit to indicate where the closet available resources are located.
- Wireless mobile VoIP communication – solutions tap into the hospital’s wireless local area network as its infrastructure and can be integrated with monitoring systems and bed management solutions.
- Wireless patient monitor technologies – use sensors that can be integrated into the patient’s bed or mattress pad to provide continuous bed-level vigilance. At James A. Haley Veterans' Administration Hospital in Tampa, Fla., hospital, patients receive care more rapidly through the use of wireless monitoring bed pads.
- Delivery robots – can handle a number of fetch-and-deliver tasks and do not require any structural changes to hospital interiors. At Washington Hospital Center in Washington, D.C., two robots deliver routine medication carts to the units, freeing up pharmacy technicians to join the care team.
- Interactive patient system – provides two-way communication and delivers multimedia content at the bedside. At Winchester Hospital in Winchester, Va., system prompts patients to view educational videos on such topics such as hand-washing and fall prevention which frees up nurses’ time for patient care.
