Profile: Indianapolis Hospitals Adopting HIT
The Indianapolis Star has a story today about health care IT adoption in the Indianapolis area.
system will be used to help make sure the right patient is given the
correct medication. Bar codes placed on nurses' badges, patients'
bracelets and drug packaging all will be tied to an electronic medical
record. “We're hoping that will reduce error to zero,” he [Daniel Evans, chief executive of Clarian Health Partners] said.
Riley and Indiana University hospitals, by the middle of next year
caregivers will begin to use wireless devices to electronically record
patient information and vital signs, according to Rich Johnson,
Clarian's chief information officer. A similar effort is planned for
Methodist Hospital for 2007.
Riverview Hospital in Noblesville plans in June to begin phasing in a
$4 million software system for recording patient information and
providing caregivers with protocols for treating patients.
[Hat tip: iHealthBeat]
DexCom Selects AMI Semiconductor for Novel Implantable Continuous Glucose Sensor
AMI Semiconductor is in the news again, this time with an implantable glucose monitoring system. Glucose monitoring vendor DexCom is using the AMI ultra-low power wireless ASIC system-on-chip. From the press release:
“The wireless frequency band used in this application is the
402-405MHz medical implant communication service (MICS) band, which is
reserved for communication with implantable devices. Our ASTRIC
technology with its quick start oscillator proved crucial to reach the
very low power consumption allowed for the RF communication,” said Kirk
Peterson, AMIS wireless product manager.
The specifications
for the AMIS solution were developed in close collaboration between the
engineering teams at DexCom and AMIS and required extremely low power
consumption due to implant longevity and size restrictions. The total
average current drain from the battery is less than 3uA. The AMIS SoC
includes a 32kHz oscillator, current and voltage references,
high-precision analog-to-digital converter (ADC), digital filtering and
sensor bias running at 100-percent duty cycle, and a low-duty RF
section.
Previous post on AMI here.
Unintentional RF Interference and Medical Devices – Two New Studies
The journal for the International Anesthesia Research Society, Anesthesia & Analgesia, published a study
(full text $15) done in Stockholm on electromagnetic interference (EMI)
on medical devices. They tested “new” communications technologies like
cell phones (GPRS and UMTS) and wireless LANs (WLANs). The bottom line:
areas and during operations,
but direct contact between medical devices and wireless communication
devices ought to be avoided. In the case of GPRS, at a distance of 50
cm, it caused an older infusion pump to alarm and stop infusing; the
pump had to be reset. Also, 10 cases of interference with device
displays occurred. GPRS can be used safely at a distance of 1 m.
Terminals/cellular phones using these technologies should be allowed
without restriction in public areas because the risk of interference is
minimal.
The Mayo Clinic recently announced their own study with a more conservative finding:
equipment, Mayo Clinic researchers report in the October issue of Mayo
Clinic Proceedings that the cellular telephones tested did not
interfere with medical devices that were more than three feet away,
marking an improvement. In the current study, 44 percent of the devices
recorded some interference from the cellular telephones but the vast
majority of this interference should not have had any significance for
the patient.
You can listen to an audio news story (a pod-cast for the cognoscenti) on this topic at The Healthcare IT Guy's site, here.
New Medical Connectivity Vendor
I chatted with Nicholas Cain this morning, Managing Director of Cain Medical.
Cain Medical is based in Paris, also with offices in London. They
provide a server-based medical device connectivity solution. Nicholas
started his firm earlier this year, after spending over a year in
development. Cain Medical is the third vendor in a group including HEI (and their LinkIt) and Capsule Technologie.
What sets Cain Medical apart is their focus on providing a robust
server-based medical device data service that provides medical device
connectivity and data acquisition for telemedicine (like VisICU) or
paperless charting. As a start up, Cain Medical is currently focused on
the European market. They hope to have their initial pilot/reference
sites soon.
Cain Medical's server runs on LINUX for a variety of reasons. First,
fewer hackers target the LINUX platform for malicous code compared to
Microsoft (and as an open source operating system, provides greater
transparency and assurance when vulnerabilities are discovered). High
availability server configurations are easier (and lower cost) to
implement on LINUX compared to Microsoft platforms. The server is
script drive to enable customer configuration and includes a web server
for “lights out” management. A database stores and forwards all device
data, providing acknowledgement and re sends of data when required.
During our call, we talked about various market trends (standards, EMR
adoption, market segmentation) and discussed potential similarities to
the IEEE 1073 MIB and DICOM.
The diagnostic imaging PACS market and the adoption of DICOM provide an
interesting model for considering medical device connectivity. Time
will tell how solutions like Sensitron or devices with their own connectivity (like smart pumps or telemetry) fit into solutions like Cain Medical's.
This is definitely a company to keep an eye on.
