Epic is the same company that supplies the electronic medical records system used by Kaiser. Long Beach Memorial is one very large and busy facility. Patients as well as assets will now use the technology and can be tracked. There’s also the business intelligence side of this for reporting and will allow for employees to be moved from one department to another based on real time information, such as patient flow, emergencies, etc. The tracking system measures and interprets location, movement and interactions between people and equipment. The software is using standard HL-7 standards, thus it can be formatted to an XML data format and so on as needed.
Information will contain room assignments as well as staff assigned to the patients. BD
Long Beach Memorial Medical Center in Long Beach, California, has successfully interfaced the Amelior EDTracker(R) patient and asset tracking system to their Epic emergency department documentation system. The interface provides real-time patient location information to their documentation system without requiring manual data entry. The automatic tracking system has been in use in the department since 2002 and has assisted the department in reducing patient wait times and length of stay in a department that now treats over 90,000 patient visits annually.
The Amelior EDTracker system automatically tracks patient, staff and movable medical equipment location through an interface to a facility's choice of real-time location network including active-RFID, infrared, ultrasound, ultra-wideband, Wi-Fi and ZigBee. Using emergency department workflow intelligence, the tracking system measures and interprets location, movement and interactions between people and equipment to recognize patient care milestones. Additional intelligence recognizes the significance of events and alerts the appropriate caregivers. By visualizing the real-time care progression of patients based on interfaces to RTLS and department information systems, caregivers are able to manage their workflows more efficiently. This enables departments facing rising patient volumes to increase their effective capacity. Integrated reporting tools including a real-time dashboard and on-demand reports help departments to optimize patient flow further.
As someone who moved into Healthcare IT recently, I am beginning to have a better understanding of Epic system. (Hence I truly appreciate the insights you are sharing on this blog).
ReplyDeleteThe integrated reporting tools you mentioned that included a real-time dashboard, was it build on another 3rd party tool? As far as I know Epic only recommended Crystal Reports which does not include any real-time dashboard.
Well I believe the 3rd party created the dashboard here, big move right now with those types of companies too.
ReplyDeleteEpic has grown with the times, and may have modules that would apply, it's almost hard to say as each hospital configuration and software products vary so much.