I recently returned from the inaugural Medical Connectivity Conference held in Boston from September 10-11. It was a good conference, but it can make a person’s head spin with all of the Use Cases, updates from industry standards development groups (IHE-PCD, Continua, ICE, HITSP), an alphabet soup of communication and connectivity standards (DB9, DB22, RJ45, ASTM F29, iS77,ZigBee, 802.11n), and new compliance mandates for managing networks connected to bedside medical devices. It’s a jungle out there.

What does all this mean to our clients considering patient care device integration (PCDI) and other point-of-care technology? Let’s start with the obvious. This stuff is complicated. There are, as yet, no plug-and-play solutions for device integration in the acute care environment. However, there are very tangible patient care and patient safety benefits to be derived from PCDI and the overall convergence of medical and information technology.  There are also external drivers accelerating the adoption of new integrated systems, not the least of which is the ONC’s 2015 target objective to achieve medical device interoperability as part of “meaningful use.” If you add to that the expected publication in 2010 of the IEC8001 standard, which defines best practice for managing risk associated with enterprise networks incorporating medical devices, it becomes obvious that hospitals need to start planning now. The convergence of medical and information technology will bring a sea of change to how we select, test, implement and manage point-of-care technology and the wired and wireless networks on which it resides.

So, how to begin? Always a good place to start is to have a road map for point-of-care technology in your organization. Envision the future; asses your current environment; develop tactical plans for acquiring and deploying technology to achieve your patient safety and patient care goals; and determine your tolerance for risk. Engage nursing leadership to understand how workflow can be optimized at the patient bedside with stationary and mobile technology, and how it can be integrated with the hospital’s enterprise network and clinical applications. Bring in clinical engineering to learn how they’ve managed risk associated with life critical and life support networks. Encourage biomedical engineering to educate your team about how medical devices are increasingly incorporating PC-functionality and how equipment management systems are evolving. And, last but not least, have your information systems professionals bring to the table their competencies and knowledge of network management, clinical information systems, data integration, and project management.

It’s time to get started. In future point-of-care technology blogs we’ll discuss market ready components of PCDI, how to interrogate vendor offerings, which standards development organizations you should watch and how to get involved, how biomedical and IT departments need to rethink Help Desk and field support services with PCDI, and many other related topics. Let us know which ones are vexing you the most. For more information about Santa Rosa’s PCDI and point-of-care technology advisory and implementation services, click here.

Marilyn Hailperin

Associate Partner