Healthcare Technology Featured Article

September 20, 2012

Palomar Health Using Cisco's Network Solutions to Improve New Medical Center


Palomar Health, California’s largest health district, announced today that it has collaborated with Cisco for critical hospital services and applications that will allow doctors and nurses to communicate and share information with each other anywhere, anytime, patients to contact their doctors from bedside, and overall, improve the way care is delivered at the new Palomar Health Medical Center.

Palomar has made Cisco’s network and data center solutions the center of its plans to build “one of the most technologically-advanced hospitals in the nation,” according to hospital sources.

The new 288-bed, 11-story medical center in western Escondido opened for patient care on August 19, 2012. The idea is to use the newest technologies to heal and provide care, while making the hospital as patient-friendly as possible.

"Cisco's advanced infrastructure and collaboration solutions are a key enabler for many of our innovation programs,” said Orlando Portale, chief innovation officer at Palomar Health, in a statement. “This includes the infrastructure to enable next generation mobile wireless tracking, remote robotics, biometric person identification, and automated medication dispensing, to name a few. Our partnership with Cisco will enable us to translate new ideas into real world opportunities that help drive improvements in patient care and operational efficiencies."

A 10-gigabit high-bandwidth network will allow the hospital to provide video, messaging, voice and images all on one network, Portale told eWEEK. 

Palomar executives worked closely with Cisco during the designing of the new hospital to provide healthcare providers with the ability to offer new levels of mobility and collaboration among caregivers, patients and families.

Now important patient information can be shared faster and more efficiently with caregivers, anywhere, anytime. Patients also have more freedom to communicate, as they can stay connected to a guest Wi-Fi network throughout the facility.

The Cisco network allows Palomar to develop and use multiple new patient and caregiver applications today, “including alert management and EMR systems, and primes the hospital for any future technological developments,” the statement read.

Cisco’s switching and routing solutions provide physicians and caregivers highly secure, concurrent access to patient health information from a smartphone or tablet, and the ability to initiate real-time videoconferencing sessions from those devices to collaborate regarding care options with the care team; better organizational capability and capacity to communicate, while bringing together data, voice, and videoconferencing; more efficient communication between physicians and nurses, anytime, anywhere across the hospital and also, patients directly from the bedside, and receive notifications that a lab test is ready.




Edited by Brooke Neuman
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