Healthcare Technology Featured Article

June 07, 2013

To A Healthier You: Medical Device Integration and Why You Might Love It


God forbid you’re ever hospitalized, but if it happens wouldn’t you feel better knowing your condition is being continuously monitored?  Not the hourly check in from a nurse, but a constant stream of data accessible by your entire medical team. This is the future of care at hospitals like The University of Arizona Health Network in Tucson, who recently chose Capsule Tech, Inc. for their medical device integration (MDI) needs. Capsule Tech’s system will begin providing emergency data integration and automatic patient monitoring to 600 beds, as well as critical care wards and the Operating Room (OR).

MDI technology regularly records a patient’s vital signs, even in the rare case when a nurse is unable to make rounds on time. Even slight changes can notify medical staff to a change in a patient’s condition and automatic bedside readings will provide a consistent flow of information to inform medical care. If your heart bobbled at 3:08am and the nurse doesn’t round until 4am, the anomaly would still be caught on tape and available for analysis. Basic bedside devices like pumps and drips are also integrated and managed by the system.

Patient safety and improved standards of care are the driving force behind the medical community’s adoption of MDI. "Timely access to accurate vital signs data, the first indicators of a patient's condition, is that much more critical to ensuring a patient's safety,” notes Stuart Long, Chief Marketing and Sales Officer at Capsule Tech.

For emergency cases, Capsule Tech’s services transmit immediately accessible readings from ICU equipment to a patient’s Electronic Medical Record (EMR). It will also link to Emergency Department (ED) and Operating Room (OR) with real time data. Several doctors at different locations could easily consult on care with access to the patient’s EMR

Privacy is always a concern when it comes to medical information and the medical community is working to ensure the highest level of security for personal information. During a 2012 summit on MDI, Kevin Stine of the National Institute of Standards and Technology said they don’t have to reinvent the wheel. “We’re working with industry and academic partners. It’s not new concepts; it’s really back to basics: Design security from the beginning to increase resiliency of the system. If a system fails, you want it to work like a firewall in the IT space—you don’t want it to fail open, you want it to fail shut."




Edited by Ashley Caputo
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