Wireless innovations to improve your healthcare operations and patient satisfaction
Healthcare mobility and wireless
solutions from IBM
Highlights
■ Improve staff productivity,
patient response times, asset
management and tracking, and
quality of care through enhanced
communication
■ Establish a secure and robust
wireless infrastructure to support
your healthcare mobility and real-
time tracking solutions
In the demanding healthcare
environment—where communication
is critical—organizations are striving to
find the most effective ways to put clini-
cians and staff in touch with the
resources, assets and information they
need to reduce costs, and improve
patient safety and quality of care.
Healthcare provider solutions from
IBM provide new technologies and
solutions that can dramatically improve
clinician productivity, data accuracy,
patient response times, and quality of
care. IBM offers a wide range of mobil-
ity and wireless solutions designed
specifically for the healthcare industry,
giving your staff members the tools and
■ Integrate multiple communication
information they need to stay in touch
systems and networks, to simplify
and informed.
your infrastructure and reduce
costs
Mobility and wireless solutions can help
healthcare organizations:
● Reduce medical errors and risk.
● Improve responsiveness and consis-
tency of patient care.
● Enable more effective care to an ever-
increasing number of patients.
● Provide higher visibility and accounta-
bility for equipment and patients in
real time.
● Ensure high-speed access to critical
information across the clinical
ecosystem.
● Reduce the cost and complexity of
multiple communication systems,
including Wi-Fi, cellular, paging, nurse
call and telephony.
Healthcare provider organizations can
benefit from the implementation of
robust, proven mobility and wireless
solutions in numerous ways. They can
uncover significant cost savings to opti-
mize scarce clinical resources and
reduce medical asset loss. They can
offer improved quality of care and gain
a higher rate of patient satisfaction.
Finally, they can enable more efficient
processes and workflows, which can
facilitate compliance with regulations
such as the Healthcare Insurance
Portability and Accountability Act, The
Joint Commission (formerly JCAHO)
regulations, and Sarbanes-Oxley.
IBM as your trusted partner for
implementing healthcare system
solutions
For healthcare organizations looking to
leverage and integrate their communi-
cations, operations, and information
flow, IBM can provide a wide range of
IBM offers a wide range of mobility and wireless solutions and services for healthcare providers, addressing
your unique requirements with a comprehensive, vendor-neutral approach.
industry-leading mobility and wireless
solutions to meet your unique needs.
IBM healthcare solutions include wire-
less infrastructure, wireless voice com-
munication, real-time location services,
event-driven notification services, enter-
prise asset management, and patient
workflow and data analysis.
IBM’s healthcare workflow consulting
practices can help address critical
hospital initiatives to improve patient
care, patient safety, asset optimization,
and supply chain efficiencies.
IBM’s methodology and extensive
knowledge of best practices in health-
care can be leveraged to meet hospital
quality, safety and financial goals.
2
IBM also offers a full project lifecycle of
technical services for mobility and wire-
less solutions, including strategy,
assessment, design, integration,
deployment and ongoing maintenance.
For example, to help ensure successful
implementation of your wireless voice
communication, event-driven notifica-
tion and real-time tracking solutions,
IBM can assess your existing wireless
network to determine whether it pro-
vides a secure, robust infrastructure
capable of supporting your healthcare
mobility initiatives. If the necessary
foundation is not in place, IBM can
provide a vendor-neutral approach to
selecting a wireless infrastructure tai-
lored for your environment’s business
and technical requirements.
Because IBM has extensive expertise
providing wireless solution design serv-
ices for clients and environments world-
wide, they can offer your organization
specific recommendations and design
plans, taking into consideration busi-
ness goals and applications, perform-
ance, availability, security and ongoing
management. Once the design has
been created, IBM will take preparatory
steps to help ensure a successful
implementation. These steps can
include procuring equipment, develop-
ing detailed configurations, and testing
configurations in a lab environment.
Finally, IBM can deploy the solution as
an initial pilot before fully implementing
it in the production environment, and
can provide your staff with training and
support.
These world-class services reflect
industry best practices, unmatched
technology and solution expertise from
IBM, and the depth and breadth of
experience IBM has gained in the
healthcare industry.
Wireless voice communication
systems for timely decision making
IBM can help your organization set up
mobile voice communication between
healthcare professionals at the point
of care in order to increase employee
productivity, streamline operations,
facilitate decision making, and improve
patient satisfaction. Polycom
SpectraLink Wireless Telephone, for
example, can provide instant wireless
voice communication, which users con-
trol with spoken commands. Mobile
staff members can be immediately con-
nected to the people and resources
they need. This solution reduces phone
tag, overhead paging and the need to
physically search for a person—giving
healthcare providers more time for
patients.
Polycom SpectraLink Wireless
Telephone handsets can be registered
in up to 10 systems, including nurse
call systems, patient monitoring, real-
time location services, and speech
recognition, enabling healthcare
providers who travel between locations
to bring along their handsets. Using
Polycom SpectraLink Wireless
Telephone, you can send and receive
text messages, get help from specified
departments, or communicate with co-
workers or outside resources instantly.
IBM can help you develop a design and
deployment strategy through a require-
ments gathering workshop, develop
system design, procure and configure
handsets, conduct system installation,
and test and provide end-user training.
3
Real-time location services for
enhanced resource utilization
IBM can provide visibility into the condi-
tion of medical assets, equipment,
patients, clinicians and staff members
using real-time location services (RTLS),
helping your teams respond and admin-
ister care more quickly and safely where
and when care is needed. RTLS can
offer healthcare providers dramatic ben-
efits, help minimize theft and loss,
improve asset utilization, reduce capital
expenditures, and improve overall
patient safety and quality of care.
Real-time tracking solutions collect
information that enables hospitals to
improve workflow processes by pin-
pointing bottlenecks. Understanding
the location, time and condition of
resources can help improve patient
care by enabling quick identification of
the nearest available equipment
required for care. RTLS can also facili-
tate the monitoring of safety processes
such as hand washing and improve
hospital financials by enabling auto-
matic billing of specialty equipment to
specific patients.
IBM has a thorough understanding
of the diverse real-time tracking and
sensor-based options such as RFID
used in healthcare environments and
can help you select the right technology
and solution to fit your needs. For
clients who require active Wi-Fi real-
time location technology leveraging an
existing network, IBM partners with
market leaders such as Aeroscout and
Ekahau. IBM also supports other real-
time tracking technologies, working
with partners like Sonitor, which pro-
vides an ultrasound system that is
immune to electromagnetic interference
and provides sub-room level location
accuracy. Once the technology and
provider are identified, IBM can help
you develop system design and imple-
ment a robust and scalable solution.
Event-driven notification services to
help you address critical issues
quickly
IBM can help your organization
implement event-driven, real-time
notification services. Systems such as
IBM WebSphere® Premises Server and
Globestar’s ConnexALL can integrate
communication resources that enable
intelligent, real-time notification to
healthcare providers and other parties
wherever they are. Important data gen-
erated by hospital back-end systems
and communication systems such as
nurse call systems can be transmitted
to mobile devices via the hospital sys-
tem’s I/O gateway in the form of alerts,
and appropriate action can be taken by
recipients based on the nature and
severity of the alerts.
The use of these systems can translate
to more accurate and timely medication
administration, effective remote patient
monitoring, higher patient security,
instant and accurate medical record
entry, and more effective patient bed
management, resulting in improved
quality of care. You can also enable
enhanced patient location tracking for
patients who might wander, as well as
for visitor, patient, clinician and staff
safety to sound alerts if they enter a
secured area. Replay features can help
identify who has come into contact with
contagiously infected patients, staff or
equipment and help quickly quarantine
outbreaks.
Event-driven, real-time notification sys-
tems can also help with building man-
agement, resulting in enhanced patient
and clinical experiences. For instance,
staff members can receive information
regarding HVAC, building security sys-
tems and fire alarms so that these
issues can be addressed before they
cause harm or discomfort.
4
Enterprise asset management for easy
access to information and resources
IBM has the solution expertise to facili-
tate critical medical equipment man-
agement, supply chain management,
contact management and service level
agreement tracking. With a robust,
scalable system such as IBM Maximo®
Asset Management in place, your
organization can better monitor and
manage assets, including compliance
with governmental and industry regula-
tions, reporting requirements, and opti-
mization of inventory and capital.
Asset management systems offer
instrument calibration, support for elec-
tronic signatures, and support for cor-
rective and preventive action. They can
help your organization use assets more
effectively. In addition to improving the
timeliness and accuracy of information,
such systems can help ensure proper
maintenance, improving the reliability of
assets and resulting in a higher return
on investment. IBM can help you
develop a deployment strategy through
a requirements gathering workshop,
develop system design, conduct sys-
tem installation, and test and provide
end-user training.
Workflow and data analysis for
intelligent business decision making
IBM enables an information-based
approach to healthcare delivery
through patient workflow management
and data analysis using systems such
as IBM Cognos® business intelligence
software. These systems collect critical
business data across the enterprise and
enable you to view information in a way
that makes sense for your environment.
Information can be viewed through
dashboards, scorecards, analysis
reports, queries and alerts. Business
intelligence can help you to understand
what is happening in your healthcare
organization, identify factors that under-
lie those events, and provide you with
opportunities to take action on critical
issues before they impact business,
and more importantly, patient safety
and satisfaction. Business intelligence
systems can target specific areas of the
hospital including people, assets and
tools. Access to information presented
in this way gives you real-time visibility
into performance.
IBM Prolink project management
methodology for business process
improvement
IBM can also provide project manage-
ment services including process
re-engineering and optimization using
IBM Prolink methodology. This process
consulting tool for operations and strat-
egy can help your organization map
current processes and compare them
to industry best practices. It can help
you improve both business and clinical
processes, and enable you to imple-
ment a business-centric IT foundation
to support your mobility and wireless
systems.
Prolink enables healthcare providers to
understand the changes to their busi-
nesses before implementing new tech-
nologies. In this way, you can prepare
your staff for the ways in which new
technologies such as mobility and wire-
less solutions will affect everyday job
duties. The stages in a Prolink imple-
mentation include defining expected
outcomes from operational changes,
introducing metrics to guide workflow
and system functionality, refining work
processes, and evaluating results
against measurable objectives defined
at the inception of the project.
The IBM difference
IBM has successfully worked with
healthcare providers worldwide to
implement cost-effective, security-rich
mobility and wireless solutions, offering
each organization a customized
5
approach and proven solution.
IBM offers a comprehensive portfolio of
technologies, software and services,
from simple initial assessments and
pilots to full-enterprise deployments, to
help deliver robust and flexible solutions
that best fit your environment and busi-
ness needs.
IBM has a team of highly skilled serv-
ices practitioners and a broad ecosys-
tem of IBM Business Partners to help
deliver innovative solutions that can be
integrated with your existing healthcare
systems. The capabilities IBM can pro-
vide include strategic planning, assess-
ment and implementation of mobility
and wireless infrastructures and con-
verged communications systems, net-
working architecture optimization,
end-user support, device management,
telecom expense management,
and security and privacy systems
implementation.
Experienced IBM consultants can iden-
tify the right technologies and software,
design the most appropriate solutions,
and implement them using industry
best practices. They can help health-
care organizations avoid common tech-
nology pitfalls and enable them to focus
on their core competencies—delivering
high quality patient care cost effectively.
For more information
To learn more about healthcare mobility
and wireless solutions from IBM, please
contact your IBM representative, or visit
ibm.com/healthcare.
Additionally, IBM Global Financing can
tailor financing solutions to your specific
IT needs. For more information on great
rates, flexible payment plans and loans,
and asset buyback and disposal, visit:
ibm.com/financing.
© Copyright IBM Corporation 2009
IBM Corporation
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Produced in the United States of America
February 2009
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