A tie-up to boost the flow of telemedicine
Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences Telemedicine Center has selected Spacenet Inc. – a leading provider of high-performance satellite and hybrid terrestrial networking solutions for corporates, governments and home/small office customers in the United States and worldwide- to provide satellite network services for its new mobile telemedicine clinic.
The Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences offers programs in osteopathic medicine, biomedical sciences and forensic sciences. The OSU College of Osteopathic Medicine has been nationally ranked by U.S. News & World Report as one of the top medical schools in the US for the past six years. The OSU Center for Health Sciences, its College of Osteopathic Medicine and affiliated teaching hospital support is one of the largest statewide tel medicine programs of the USA. OSU Telemedicine Center is using Spacenet’s satellite network services with Cisco technology to sport its mobile medical facility.
Spacenet’s advanced Connexstar satellite services with autoacquisition antenna technology can provide the ability to rapidly deploy communications solutions virtually anywhere in the United States, and serve as an ideal solution for emergency response. Connexstar services deliver high-performance satellite communications offered in fulltime and part-time usage based packages. OSU Telemedicine is utilizing Spacenet’s on-demand satellite services to support its data communications and Voice over IP (VoIP). for the mobile telemedicine clinic.
Network Operations Manager for OSU’s Telemedicine Center, Jon Barnaby said, “The OSU Mobile Telemedicine Clinic will provide a valuable service for the state of Oklahoma by offering access to specialty medical services throughout the region with an emphasis on rural areas. The use of Spacenet’s satellite services provides the flexibility and reliability that we need; to support the advanced communication requirements of a mobile telemedicine clinic. In addition, with the medical vehicle being on the road on a scheduled basis, Spacenet’s part-time satellite services are an ideal choice for us, providing a cost-effective way to meet our real-time data communications needs.” Spacenet President and COO Glenn Katz said, “Spacenet has applied its 25 years of experience in supporting mission- critical public and private sector networks to delivering advanced solutions for go-anywhere communications services. Our on-demand services, combined with transportable autoacquire antenna solutions make a perfect fit for the needs of users such as telemedicine, emergency response or first responder organizations.”
Intel’s endeavour in Mobile Clinical care
Intel’s new mobile healthcare platform is designed specifically for clinicians. Intel has helped to pioneer a new solution to address the myriad challenges that healthcare professionals regularly face in dealing with patient histories and communications. Designed specifically for clinicians at the front lines of patient care, an exciting mobile point-ofcare platform called the mobile clinical assistant (MCA) facilitates overworked medical staff in performing a vast array of important tasks. The MCA can help reduce medication, dispensing errors and ease staff workloads so that clinicians can spend more time taking care of the patient, by providing up-to-date access to patient information where it’s most crucial at the point of care.
Intel has collaborated with Motion Computing a long-time provider of mobility products in healthcare to develop the first generation MCA product. Healthcare professionals now have ccess to a portable system that can record, retrieve, identify, verify, and document-all at the point of care. To help the market get prepared for products based on the MCA platform, Intel has also worked with leading industry suppliers, such as electronic medical records software vendors, to optimize their software to run on MCA platform.
The unique ergonomic design of the MCA features an integrated handle and a spill and drop-tolerant enclosure, which can be easily cleaned with disinfectants. The ability to sanitize the casing may reduce the risk of contamination and limit the spread of infections as healthcare professionals move from patient to patient. A bar code scanning feature enables accurate patient identification, immediately matching the patient to treatment plans and records, and is intended to reduce medication- dispensing errors. In a nutshell, this advanced system has many integrated features that connect healthcare professionals with the information they need for enhancing patient care.
Agfa HealthCa re introduces enhancements to its IMP AX
Recently Agfa HealthCare has announced further enhancements to its web-enabled, persona-based IMPAX 6 PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication System), thereby addressing the advanced visualization needs in diagnostic imaging. These new clinical applications are being developed for specialized areas such as virtual colonoscopy, nuclear medicine, registration and fusion and orthopaedics, and they further extend the clinical usability, productivity and efficiency strengths of IMPAX.
Here it deserves a mention that IMPAX 6 is Agfa HealthCare’s web-enabled, persona-based, integrated PACS/RIS/reporting solution. IMPAX 6 facilitates the diagnostic reporting process, streamlines workflows and enables image and information management and increased collaboration departmentally, enterprise- wide or even beyond.
Agfa HealthCare’s IMPAX Virtual Colonoscopy is a non-invasive procedure for visualization of endoscopic views of the colon and an extremely patient-friendly alternative to conventional endoscopy, as it does not require the use of a colonoscope.
The IMPAX Nuclear Medicine review solution includes integrated MPR/MIP (multi-planar reformatting/maximum intensity projection)functions for volumetric data, calculation of SUV (standardized uptake values) and region of interest tools. Answering the need of reading radiologists to compare single modality as well as multi-modality images, IMPAX Registration & Fusion allows for multi-modality fusion of anatomical studies (CT/MR) or a combination of anatomical and physiological studies (tracers in PET images). The IMPAX Registration & Fusion solution is ideally suited for non-invasive diagnosis and surgical treatment and planning
RT X Healthcare’s telehealth monitor makes life easy for chronically ill patients
Denmark-based RTX Healthcare, which specializes in the development and manufacturing of wireless medical devices for remote monitoring, has launched the new RTX3370 Telehealth Monitor, which is designed specifically to improve the way of providing healthcare to patients suffering from chronic diseases such as heart failure, COPD, diabetes, etc. outside hospitals.
“The RTX3370 Telehealth Monitor is targeting the disease management and home healthcare industry to monitor chronically ill patients at home,” said Bjarne Flou, Managing Director of RTX Healthcare. “The uniqueness of our product is that it is offered as a system device which interoperates directly with our clients’ clinical information systems. Our business model is based on hardware sales, compared to most other competing solutions in the industry, where the devices are tied up to a proprietary infrastructure and the business model are based on a monthly fee, fee per user and likewise,” he added.
Swiss Centre for Telemedicine Medgate, a provider of disease management and telehealth services, is among the first customers to integrate the RTX3370 into their portfolio of telehealth offerings. The RTX3370 engages the patients through personalized daily interactions and questionnaires, while collecting vital signs. The vital signs, such as weight, blood pressure and blood glucose information, are transmitted seamlessly via Bluetooth, InfraRed or RS232 from industry standard wired or wireless peripheral biomedical devices to the RTX3370. All peripheral devices are standard of-the-shelf products from third party industry leading suppliers. Data are sent through the regular telephone systems and the global Internet, to the clients’ own clinical information system, using open standards such as Webservices and SSL128. Other unique features of the RTX3370 Telehealth Monitor include a large, easy to read colour display, simple buttons and speaker for vocalization of the patient dialogue.
Apollo and IBM to facilitate online medical knowledge dissemi nation
India’s Apollo Hospital Group has joined hands with IBM in an endeavour to develop an online professional platform for doctors across the globe. The proposed online platform is named as ‘Healthcare Super Highway’ and it will undergo phasewise implementation.
What’s more, according to Apollo Hospital Group’s Chairman, C Pratap Reddy, Microsoft has also shown interest in partnering the project. However its entry is yet to be finalized. Healthcare Super Highway aims to provide access platform to 500,000-odd physicians across the globe, thereby enabling them to interact and exchange ideas, information and opinions pertaining to their profession. This will help the doctors on consulting over a difficult case or eliciting expert second opinion. Success of this project will open new windows of knowledge and learning opportunity for the Indian doctors.
Locating patient data with a blink of an eye
Nearly 100 million patient data sets in one database, combined with queries made by up to 1,000 concurrent users, have resulted in response times of less than a second.
This is in summary the result of a weeklong test of the Inter-ComponentWare Master Patient Index (ICW MPI) at the Hewlett- Packard European Performance and Benchmark Center in Bblingen, Germany.
I n t e r C o m p o n e n t -WareAG (ICW) is a leading international eHealth specialist with locations in Germany,Austria, Switzerland, the USA and Bulgaria. Among other things, ICW develops and distributes software and hardware components for the healthcare IT infrastructure, for electronic health cards, the LifeSensor personal health record as well as networking solutions for hospitals and physicians’ offices. As part of the bIT4health consortium, ICW provided important consulting services for the implementation of the electronic health card in Germany, is involved in the Austrian eCard project andhas recently won the pilot project for the national health card in Bulgaria.
The ICW MPI is a component of the ICW hospital connectivity solution, which links existing but previously isolated hospital information systems without the need to replace the current software. It enables hospital doctors to access all medical information on their patients that is available in the whole hospital group at any time.
Recently a customer project required the ICW MPI to prove how quickly and reliably it could locate individual patient data from a sea of information, under extreme conditions. According to Thomas Breig, Managing Director of Healthcare Sales, HP Germany, “We subjected the ICW MPI to an extensive load test, at the HP European Performance Center. The software passed with flying colours, exceeding our expectations. The experts from ICW and HP were able to show how well the ICW MPI performs, as well as how stable and scaleable it is.”
Alexander Ihls, Product Line Manager of ICW’s hospital connectivity solutions, summarized the test week, saying: “We first saved 15 million, and then 100 million patient data sets in one database, and in both cases we achieved stable response times of less than a second. The test results have proved that our solution is just as suitable for large hospital groups, as it is for the installation of regional and nationwide networks.”
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