Alphanumeric Paging in an Academic Hospital Setting
The American Journal of Surgery published this paper on the benefits of an alphanumeric paging system on physician's work environment (full text $30). It is not surprise that improved communications was beneficial.
intervention were high and did not differ significantly
postintervention. For nursing staff, postintervention perceptions of
the text-paging system were significantly more positive than
preintervention, especially with regard to perceived improvements in
patient care (54.1% versus 81.6%, P < .05). Residents’
paging logs reflected significantly decreased interruptions to patient
care after the intervention (28.2% versus 46.9%, P < .05), with less pages requiring a call back (100% versus 73.6%, P < .05).
It's always nice to see quantitative data demonstrating the value of improved communications. Doing a study like this with an old and obsolete technology like pagers seems, well, a waste. No one's ever studied the effectiveness of pager based communications in a hospital before?
Perhaps this is just my pager bias showing. Pagers are an open loop system – there is nothing that ensures that a page was sent and received by the pager, let alone acknowledged by the user. This is a poor technology platform for communications that is intended to improve patient safety. A study like this measuring the impact of new more capable technologies, like wireless voice-over-IP (VoIP) would seem much more relevant. Perhaps the investigators could repeat their study with Vocera badges or a VoIP phone with graphics (for waveforms) to see if there is an increase in effectiveness with the newer technologies.
IntelliDOT Raises $13 Million in Series C Round
San Diego company IntelliDOT announced today raising $13 million in a Series C round lead by Integral Capital Partners of Menlo, CA (press release). The funds raised will be used for sales and marketing of their CAREt bedside bar coding system.
error prevention solution for hospitals and other health care
providers. IntelliDOT's CAREt System incorporates a unique wireless
handheld computing device, an enterprise-class server and a
sophisticated, but flexible software application. In addition to
reading conventional bar codes, the CAREt System reads small,
information-rich codes called MedDOTs that can be used to create
customized documentation and communication applications.
IntelliDOT CEO, Thomas Klopack, notes that, “Recent studies have demonstrated that bar code point-of-care technology
can significantly reduce medication errors; however, less than 8
percent of hospitals in the country have adopted the technology.” At first glance two things separate IntelliDOT's solution, their unique bar code and the bar code reader (pictured right). Their proprietary bar code, called MedDOTs, is an aztec-like bar code that can encode a large amount of data. The bar code reader appears to hit all the important health care requirements – small, light weight, can be wiped down with disinfectant, and the battery lasts a 12 hour shift.
So let's run down the most common barriers to adoption for point of care solutions:
- Poor design – most of IntelliDOT's management worked together at Pyxis, so they've probably got the workflow down cold
- Ill suited hardware – they've done a lot of things right with their bar code reader – better than current PDA/bar code readers – the only open question is durability
- Proprietary technology – MedDOT comes to mind here, but perhaps there's a good justification for this over a standard aztec bar code
- Cost – there are so many things hospitals can invest in to improve patient safety and reduce operating costs, and everything's pretty expensive
It will be interesting to see how IntelliDOT does as a best of breed point of care solution against broader pharmacy systems from the likes of Cerner, McKesson, et. al. The fact that they've got a Novation contract (pdf) can't hurt. Myself, I can't help but root for the underdog.
