Table Of Contents
Cisco Imatis Mobile Care Solution Overview
Cisco Imatis Mobile Care Solution Overview
Cisco Imatis Mobile Care is a solution for healthcare that improves the communication flow for hospital staff. By deploying Cisco Imatis Mobile Care, employees in a hospital can access, receive, and utilize information from numerous disparate hospital communication systems via the Cisco Unified Communications (UC) platform and Cisco Unified Wireless Network across a Cisco network infrastructure. Caregivers in a hospital see improved care, increased patient satisfaction, and reduced cost of care. Other hospital employees receive vital clinical information while not at their primary location, wherever and whenever they want it, greatly improving their effectiveness in providing patient care. Patients can make requests from the bedside, gather information about their condition, or order services that would have otherwise required staff interaction.
Cisco Imatis Mobile Care can be viewed as an extension to the Cisco Unified Communications system that currently supports hospital environments. This solution also addresses the important requirement to upgrade a hospital's legacy communication systems. In other cases, Cisco Imatis Mobile Care might be an adjunct to the hospital's legacy communication system. In all these cases, the underlying architecture leverages Cisco network designs for places in the network (PINs), such as the campus network or a wireless infrastructure to support voice. Key technologies that bring these new services to the hospital include Cisco Unified Communication, Cisco Unified Wireless Network, and Secure Mobility. Cisco's partner Imatis provides the gateway to hospital systems and Nurse Call systems and facilitates the delivery of critical information to mobile handsets.
Executive Summary
The challenges facing healthcare are well known and extend to many areas, including cost of care, regulations and compliance, lack of information, growing numbers of patients, etc. A common framework for interoperability, based on open standards, is needed to enable secure information sharing, simplify organizational processes, improve system performance, and reduce costs. Typical comments include:
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"Public health service is underfunded and unevenly distributed."
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The goal of the Cisco Imatis Mobile Care solution enabled by key Cisco technologies and the partnership with Imatis is to return to staff and caregivers the time and resources that were lost because of poor communication flow. Improvements result when mobile staff can receive essential information anywhere in a hospital setting and when patients can retrieve information themselves without involving staff. The time and resources saved by hospital staff can then be directed back to their primary roles in the hospital.
Solution Description
The Cisco Imatis Mobile Care solution is an end-to-end system integration that provides hospital IT and system integrators with the information required to design and deploy a system that supports nurse call, stat alerts with HL7 ancillary systems, and hospital building systems. The primary focus is to facilitate a more efficient information flow from these systems to the caregivers, hospital staff, and patients. The three focus areas are:
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The foundational technology to support the delivery of this information to Cisco 7921G IP phones when staff are mobile include:
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Imatis should be contacted for specific information and considerations for integrating these medical devices and systems:
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Target Market
The Cisco Imatis Mobile Care solution is focused on solving communication bottlenecks within mid-size to large-size medical facilities. The benefits are even more amplified when large numbers of staff are involved and information flow between departments does not scale well. The solution is targeted at:
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The healthcare provider's IT Infrastructure must adhere to the Cisco Medical-Grade Network architecture for recommendations on voice over wireless designs, Cisco's Unified Communications architecture for voice and security, and Campus/Data Center design practices.
Solution Benefits
The Cisco Imatis Mobile Care solution is focused on improving communication flow inside a hospital environment. The identified use cases focus on three main target groups. The first two target groups are employees of the hospital that are mobile. One group is focused on employees whose primary purpose is providing medical care, such as nurses, doctors, laboratories, etc. The second employee group covers the remainder of the hospital staff that need information and are mobile, such as security personnel, orderlies, and other facilities-related staff. The third group that receives immediate benefit from the solution are hospital patients. Patients are not typically mobile, but usuallylocated in hospital rooms and potentially immobile. They frequently have requests or require information that they cannot obtain without the intervention of hospital staff.
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Scope of the Solution
Deploying the Cisco Imatis Mobile Care solution involves a broad range of technologies and features. To ensure a successful deployment, you must keep in mind key design and implementation considerations that center around an infrastructure that is compliant with the Cisco Medical-Grade Network. These fundamental characteristics can be achieved by adhering to the set of Cisco best practices for each of the technologies being deployed and outlined in the Cisco Medical-Grade Network architecture.
This document focuses on system considerations across campus, Cisco Unified Communications for CUCM, IP Phones, and Cisco Unified Wireless Network in collaboration with the IMATIS Hospital Communcation System. Key design considerations and specific implementations across key Cisco products and integration with the IMATIS gateway are covered to deploy Cisco Imatis Mobile Care. Integration concepts with nurse call systems, ancillary systems for HL7, and hospital service systems are also covered to provide a general understanding of the integration challenges.
This document does not cover the installation steps required by each product in the solution. For detailed configuration information we suggest you consult the individual product documentation. Because the solution spans a wide array of technologies and product sets from both Cisco and third parties, we recommend that a certified installation partner be consulted during the planning, configuration, installation, and training phases of a deployment for optimum results.
Imatis Overview
Headquartered in Porsgrunn, Norway, Imatis AS is the leader in innovative software solutions for the healthcare industry. Their products focus on connecting people, information, processes and systems within a healthcare organization. The Integration Engine, Messaging Service and clinical applications will help the customer in achieving their goal of becoming an Integrated Digital Hospital with focus on patient flow and lean thinking. The building blocks relays on the Cisco Medical-Grade Network and the Cisco Imatis Mobile Care solution.
The company was founded in 1991 by Morten Andresen and has its background from large-scale applications in the oil & gas and manufacturing industries as well as 7 years of experience from the healthcare industry. In 2007 the company was split into two separate organizations that will continue to be close technology partners. The oil & gas and manufacturing unit is now named CARDIAC Industry AS (http://www.cardiac.no) while the healthcare unit is now named Imatis AS (http://www.imatis.com). Imatis is also the name of our main product suite. Imatis has a good reputation and years of experience with implementing software as an integrated part of the hospital work flow and mobile care.
At Imatis AS they utilize their own software product family and have a large in-house product development department. The products included in the IMATIS Suite are standardized as a part of the Integrated Healthcare and Application Portfolio. Imatis work closely with National Instruments, Cisco, HP and Microsoft to embed their framework applications and modules into their products. Cisco Silver and Gold Partners is a part of the Imatis roadmap for delivering the solution portfolio in the international marketplace.
The IMATIS Suite is a service-based infrastructure and application framework. It includes several healthcare applications, like patient bedside terminals, nurse calling, electronic patient charts, vital sign/patient monitoring and notification, bed management, localization services, asset control and patient whiteboard. The platform also supports advanced and flexible services for hospital communication like notifications, team assembly, emergency medical communications, alarm management and voice.
Imatis applications provide an excellent platform for point-of-care as well as mobile services. The IMATIS role-based portal and applications run on Cisco wireless IP phones, mobile phones, patient bedside terminals, wireless computers and PDA's both inside and outside the hospital building to create a true mobile care environment. The Integration Engine can also connect to external applications and services such as a patient registry, birth registry, doctor's office or clinic, directory services, etc.
Contact information:
Imatis AS
Imatis US, Inc.
Vipeveien 51
133 Federal Street
N-3917 Porsgrunn
Suite 901
Norway
Boston MA 02110, US
Tel: +47 91 800 700
Tel: +1 (617) 515 5135
sales@imatis.com