It seems like every month you hear about another device company being acquired by another company in the healthcare space.
At the same time there is a vital requirement to address the alarm management issue, integrate medical devices into the Electronic Healthcare Record, and capture all this information to improve the clinical environment, patient outcomes, and deliver real measured business value
The challenge in the industry is that there are multiple disparate companies accomplishing pieces of this puzzle with the requirement of integrating the technology to provide the end result. Not an easy job.
More important for the clinician is to simply understand the dynamics of their environment…they went into this career to take of patients…not technology. I have seen in my decades of experience a lot of “work arounds” happen when technology is forced on the user.
I am also reminded of the early days of mobile computing (before the smart pad and smart phones), you had customized mobile computers for unique point of care applications. The problem was that the clinician would have to have a tool belt to carry them all. Compliance then became a problem.
This change may follow the business dynamics of patient monitoring. If I go back to the 1980s and 1990s, decisions were made at the departmental level. Hospitals often had multiple vendors. Then came the day of integration to the Electronic Health Record. Made a lot more sense to “standardize” on one company for one “single throat to choke”.
It also made sense that if the patient was admitted to the ED, they often were transferred to multiple areas of the hospital and often to critical care. One entry, one integration.
It also has followed the trend of “wireless (WLAN) companies. Fifteen years ago with 802.11b was approved there came to market a plethora of WLAN technology companies. Those companies are by in large gone. They have been acquired by networking providers as this provides an easier path for the client to design, implement, and support.
www.cardiopulmonarycorp.com provides a comprehensive set of solutions to solve the complex needs alarm management, integration of disparate medical devices into the Electronic Health Record, and data analytics, plus a whole lot more. It simplifies things and more then likely provides a better ROI and business value than disparate companies.
