Entries tagged with hospitals - Channel 10

Arkansas Children's Hospital: IT Innovations Enhancing the Care of Hospitalized Children

bcrounse — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 18:26:00 GMT

Every so often we do a program in my House Calls for Healthcare Professionals series of audio and video-casts that really seems to hit the mark in demonstrating the value of Microsoft technologies in the healthcare industry. I want to draw your attention to one such program.

Arkansas Children’s Hospital is cutting edge when it comes to developing solutions on Microsoft technology. First, take a look at my Blog entry on this topic to get some background and then download or listen to our audio-cast with ACH to learn more about CarePoint and other solutions. This program is especially compelling because one of my guests is a patient at the hospital; a 16 year-old boy who has cystic fibrosis and has spent more time in the hospital than most of us can ever imagine. Find out how Microsoft technologies including Xbox 360, Media Center, Visual Studio, IE, and many others have come together to make hospital stays a whole lot more enjoyable for patients, their friends, and family at Arkansas Children’s Hospital.

Here is where you can stream the audio-cast or download it to your MP3 device

Arkansas Children's Hospital: IT Innovations Enhancing the Care of Hospitalized Children
This program is also available in MP3 for download.

Program Guests:

David Higginson is chief information technology officer at Arkansas Children's Hospital (ACH). He earned a degree in accounting/finance from Liverpool University and qualified as a Chartered Management Accountant. He began developing computer systems at the age of 10 and later combined his computer and financial expertise when he began developing systems for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the British Post Office. Since moving to ACH in 1996, Mr. Higginson has developed numerous award-winning computer systems with the help of his team of 14 developers, who have created more than 400 systems in less than five years.

Penny Ward is a registered nurse who joined Arkansas Children's Hospital in 1993. Since 2002 she has been a Nursing Director for the Adolescent and General Medicine units and for the Dialysis and IV teams at the hospital.

Christopher Holstead is 16 years old and has cystic fibrosis. He has been admitted to Arkansas Children's Hospital many times and has seen how the hospital has improved the patient care experience.

Additional resources

Healthblog - additional information and screenshots of ACH CarePoint patient entertainment/education solution

Arkansas Children's Hospital

Windows XP Media Center

Xbox

Bill Crounse, MD Worldwide Health Director Microsoft Corporation

Unified Communications: The Next BIG Thing in Healthcare

bcrounse — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 21:23:00 GMT

In previous Blog entries and on my House Calls audio-cast series, I’ve highlighted healthcare customers who are doing some outstanding work using Microsoft and Microsoft partner solutions to build portals that make key performance indicators, quality standards, and price standards more transparent. These same solutions are being used to automate clinical and business work-flow processes, manage documents, and generally improve collaboration across the enterprise. Today, I want to focus on what I see as the next really big opportunity in healthcare; Unified Communication.

Healthcare is a communication intensive business. Good communication has a profound effect on the quality and safety of patient care. Communication also has a huge bearing on patient satisfaction. Yet historically, the options for how we communicate with each other in the healthcare industry have been somewhat limited. We are hampered by an industry that has far too long relied on old fashioned telephone, paging, fax, and mail (both postal and interoffice); not exactly the most contemporary communication infrastructure.

Today’s progressive businesses use a wide variety of tools and technologies to facilitate communication. Communication can be synchronous or asynchronous depending on the urgency or context of the message. Information can be relayed and exchanged by instant message, e-mail, telephone (including voice over IP), audio conferencing, or video conferencing. In addition, the concept of “presence” in communication technologies now allows us to know ahead of time if someone is available to receive a message or take a call. It also lets us set up rules on how, when, where, and on what devices we want to be contacted.

So let’s extend all that into the typical healthcare setting. No longer am I restricted to the telephone for communicating with colleagues or patients. Depending on the nature of the message, where I am and what I’m doing, I can decide to use either a synchronous or asynchronous mode of communication. No more waiting on hold or playing phone tag on the telephone. Furthermore, as communication technology converges to the computer and is increasingly facilitated by the Net, my choice of device is no longer restricted either. My office telephone, Smartphone, Pocket-PC, laptop, Tablet-PC or desktop PC will all be able to do the job for me whether it’s an instant message, e-mail, voice, or video communication that is required. This technology will also have a profound effect on the way we conduct meetings and do training in the future. The use of multi-media web conferencing and interactive e-learning technologies will absolutely explode in healthcare as we increasingly communicate electronically in the office and at home for grand rounds presentations, staff training, patient education, and more. Finally, advances in speech recognition and the incorporation of speech recognition technology into unified communications, will open up new vistas for securely accessing patient information and relaying clinical orders.

I’m not going to spill the beans on everything that is yet to come. But if you work in healthcare, or you are an industry vendor building communication and collaboration solutions for the healthcare industry, the future is blazingly bright.

Bill Crounse, MD Worldwide Health Director Microsoft

A Paperless Hospital Information System for less than $1 Million? What we can learn from Spain

bcrounse — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 22:28:00 GMT

Earlier this week I was in Barcelona, Spain, presenting at a Microsoft customer event called the Health Industry Leaders Innovation Forum. Healthcare executives from across the EMEA region came together to share information on how they are using information technology in healthcare and to exchange ideas on how to drive even greater innovation in the industry. We listened to presentations on progress being made in the provision of e-health services at the National Health Service in the UK including some exciting portal work in Wales. Members from our UK team discussed progress to date on the NHS Common-User-Interface initiative. A physician leader from Spain talked about healthcare industry trends and opportunities for venture-funded projects in his country, and IT executives from Egypt shared ideas on clinical transformation opportunities there. A complete review of the Forum proceedings is beyond the scope of my Blog, but I did want to share information on one of the presentations that particularly caught my attention. It caught my attention because it illustrates so well something I've been writing about on this Blog and elsewhere; how commodity software is being used to build very robust healthcare industry solutions quickly and inexpensively.

The customer in this case is a new hospital in the Valencia region of Spain. Torrevieja Salud is a 250 bed, privately managed, public facility that recently began serving patients. It has 11 operating theaters, 22 surgical beds and a full service ER with a 50 bed observation unit. From the very beginning, project designers planned for a facility that would be completely paperless when it opened its doors. The commodity building blocks they used included SQL Server 2005, Exchange, Terminal Server, Windows Server, MS Dynamics NAV, BizTalk 2006-HL7 Adapter, SharePoint, and the .Net Framework. Over a 2-year period, a development team of just 22 people built a fully functional healthcare information solution they call Florence. It handles all clinical and administrative functions for the entire facility. It even provides a rich balanced scorecard view of key performance indicators. Partners included Microsoft, HP, Drager Medical, Palex, B Braun, and Servicom 2000. I asked how much money they thought they had spent developing their HIS? The answer was approximately €600,000 (around $800,000). Compare that to the tens, or hundreds of millions of dollars being spent for equivalent functionality in an American hospital of equal size and you're left scratching your head. In fact, even in those American hospitals spending that kind of money I've rarely seen a true "paperless" environment.

To be honest, I didn't have an opportunity to visit Torrevieja Salud and see it with my own eyes. But even if their HIS built on commodity software did half of what is being claimed or cost 10 times as much, it would still be a bargain. I'm sure the folks at Torrevieja would be delighted to show off their new facility to anyone who might be interested. American Hospitals take note. I think there is a lesson here!

Bill Crounse, MD Healthcare Industry Director Microsoft

New Audiocast: Asklepios--Hospital of the Future

bcrounse — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 20:40:00 GMT

As I've traveled the world, I've come to appreciate the fact that some of the most innovative work in healthcare information technology is happening outside of the Unitied States. One such example is the Asklepios Hospital near Hamburg, Germany. In this month's edition of my audiocast series, "House Calls for Healthcare Professionals" we visit with an administrator and a clinician at the Asklepios Hospital to find out more about what they've done and why the hospital has been designated a "hospital of the future". We also hear from representatives of Microsoft and Intel who partnered wth Asklepios in the design of their contemporary healthcare IT infrastructure and applications. I hope you enjoy the show.

Bill Crounse, MD Healthcare Industry Director Microsoft Corporation

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Asklepios hospital in Germany: Hospital of the future
This program is also available in MP3 for download.

In February 2005, the Asklepios Group, a privately held clinic and hospital system operating in Germany, opened a brand new facility: the Asklepios Hospital Barmbek in Hamburg. The new hospital combines architectural, organizational and information technology-related innovations. It’s been called a reference center for a "hospital of the future." Hospital executives say the new facility is based on the tradition of the past and the medicine of the future. The Asklepious Future Hospital initiative was initiated by the Asklepios Group in cooperation with Microsoft and Intel.

Panel guests:

Dr. Tobias Kaltenbach, CEO, Asklepios Clinics, is responsible for the company's operative business units in West Germany, including information technology (IT) and facility management. He received his degree in engineering management from the University of Hamburg and his doctorate in management from the University of Cologne with a thesis on "quality management in hospitals."

Dr. Siegbert Faiss, Chief Physician, Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Asklepios Klinik Barmbek, has also worked as Senior Physician and Consultant at the Department of Gastroenterology at the University Hospital Benjamin Franklin in Berlin. Dr. Faiss received his degree in medicine from the University of Ulm in Donau, Germany.

Sharad Gandhi, Director, Digital Health Group - Intel EMEA, is responsible for strategy, business, sales and marketing for Intel’s success in Health care. He holds graduate degrees in Physics from Bombay University and in Electronics and Communications Engineering from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

Neil Jordan, Senior Director, Microsoft Worldwide Health Industry, is responsible for formulating and executing on Microsoft’s worldwide strategy for delivering value across the healthcare provider institutions in the global health market, from the latest high-tech urban hospitals to rural clinics in developing countries.

Additional resources: downloads

Grand Opening Announcement (76.3 KB Word file)
"Hospital of the Future" Showroom (5.85 MB Portable Document file)
Asklepios intern newsletter – Barmbek Special (2.66 MB Portable Document file)
eHealth Interoperability Platform brochure (2.41 MB Portable Document file)