Cisco makes new medical connections

Cisco Systems Inc. has announced a series of new applications that are now available as part of its Medical Grade Network, providing new solutions to aid clinician communications and workflow.

The new Cisco Clinical Connection Suite consists of four integrated clinical solutions – Nurse Call, Patient Monitoring, Location-Based Services and Collaborative Care – designed to provide faster and smarter healthcare.

Cisco says that the new applications, which have been launched internationally, will help hospitals improve productivity, reduce capital and operating costs with extended systems, and improve the quality of services.

Terri Espiner, head of the UK health group at Cisco, told E-Health Insider that the launch of the Clinical Connection Suite marked the latest development of the Medical Grade Network, moving to "virtualisation of services such as storage and servers" into the network. "It’s about brining applications into the core of the underlying infrastructure".

The new Clinical Communications Suite is based on a single converged Medical grade Network for voice, video and data, providing real-time communications, monitoring, collaboration and resource tracking delivered as an integrated solution.

One key application in the suite is location-based services, enabling hospitals to remotely track and locate key assets. The solution uses the Cisco Medical-Grade Network and real-time location services Wi-Fi and Radio Frequency Identification Systems (RFID) tracking technology, working with RFID partners PanGo Networks and AeroScout.

Espiner told EHI that Cisco and its partners were now working with one English hospital trust "that is deploying RFID tags to patient wheelchairs".

Another of the applications in the suite is Patient Monitoring, providing nurses with mobile real-time alerts and updates on patient status to any wireless IP device.

Collaborative Care meanwhile is intended to enable ad hoc collaboration between staff and clinicians, enabling patient conferences and exchange of data in real-time using on demand audio and video conferencing capabilities.

Using Cisco MeetingPlace and Tanberg’s visual communication technology, Collaborative Care enables hospitals and practices to provide to provide new services, such as real-time video-based translation capabilities for non-English speaking patients.

The final application in the suite is Nurse Call, replacing separate paging systems and enabling clinicians to swap their pagers for wireless devices or IP telephones.

One hospital to have implemented the Cisco IP-enabled Nurse Call system is Boston Medical Centre, which has replaced its outdated nurse call systems, with the Cisco Medical Grade Network and Nurse Call. Darren Dworkin, chief technology officer at Boston Medical Centre, said the new system "has helped our clinicians become significantly more productive by giving them real-time communications capabilities, for the very first time".

Pierre-Paul Allard, vice president of enterprise marketing for Cisco said that systems that support workflow was a major need in healthcare. "Building on the Cisco Medical-Grade Network, the Cisco Clinical Connection Suite is helping hospitals around the world, such as Boston Medical centre and St Olav’s in Norway, by simplifying and speeding the communications process."