Healthcare Technology Featured Article

December 21, 2013

Health Techzone Week in Review


Either you've finished your holiday shopping, or you plan to go shopping this weekend. Before you head out, catch up with the final pre-Christmas Health Techzone Week in Review of 2013.

Will Santa bring President Obama a working HealthCare.gov? He might, but the president isn't taking any chances as the Microsoft Office Division, to come to HealthCare.gov's rescue. The president hired Kurt DelBene thanks to an endorsement from Bill Gates, who cited DelBene's excellence at "managing complex large-scale technology projects." Before becoming Office Division president, DelBene served as senior VP for the Microsoft Business Division.

Although President Obama said in a speech that 500,000 Americans have signed up for health insurance on HealthCare.gov, 500K doesn't place much of a dent in the 47 million uninsured Americans that existed before the health insurance exchanges went online.

Thankfully, many other aspects of global healthcare technology are working just fine. At Evelina London Children's Hospital in the U.K., Polycom has provided video and communications solutions that make it easier to perform pediatric heart surgeries.

Polycom's RealPresence Group 500 system sends HD video from the operating room to a set of monitors around the cardiology ward. The on-call cardiologist can view patient scans at one of the monitors and talk to the surgeons using Polycom's video collaboration solution. Overall, Polycom's telemedicine devices saved the hospital 1,300 hours and increased productivity by 94 percent.

Another of this week's healthcare IT success stories comes from NiQ Health, which reported record-breaking sales of its CarePlus system. The system integrates wireless, VoIP telephony, mobile, paging, email, PDAs, patient entertainment terminals, duress systems, building management systems and big-screen information boards within a modular control unit.

The CarePlus nurse call system enables HIPAA-compliant messaging between staff members over both Wi-Fi and cellular networks, and the application works across almost every imaginable mobile device platform. NiQ Health credits its international partner network for its CarePlus sales success.

This news gives you a taste of what happened in the Health Techzone this week. Grab some eggnog, build a fire and relax before you finish your yuletide shopping. Then, tune back in to the Health Techzone to finish out the year with the latest in healthcare technology.



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