Health Technology, Digital Healthcare
PR Newswire | September 27, 2023
The Georgian Bay Information Network, a partnership of six Ontario healthcare organizations, is advancing its use of Oracle Health's electronic health records (EHR) by adding new capabilities for advanced clinical services, optimized medication administration, and oncology specialty support under its recently launched multi-year project called eNautilus. These additions are expected to help caregivers improve patient safety, enhance collaboration between caregivers across facilities, and reduce the administrative burden on clinicians across the GBIN's combined 15 hospitals.
The GBIN includes Brightshores Health System Hanover & District Hospital (joined 2002), South Bruce Grey Health Centre (joined 2005), Muskoka Algonquin Health Care (joined 2015), Orillia Soldiers Memorial Hospital (joined 2016), and Almonte General Hospital (joined 2017), all of which use a common EHR to help streamline patient information. This collaboration has been essential to making GBIN one of the first multi-site organizations to have a single, shared health record to support patients across multiple sites in the region. Aligning GBIN organizations to the same technology helps increase productivity, enhance care coordination nearly anywhere the patient is treated, and improve patient care decisions.
"Oracle's technology has been a game-changer in the way we deliver healthcare to patients and is a core pillar of our digital transformation,"
said Jamie Page, director, EMR Integration, GBIN.
Its robust functionality has enabled us to scale EHR across our network while adding new functionality to meet the changing needs of our organizations. Now, we can create and maintain a single, portable health record that follows a patient as they visit various caregivers across our regions. This gives clinicians access to comprehensive patient information to better inform decisions and improve care coordination for patients.
[Source: PR Newswire]
The GBIN manages more than 610,000 outpatient visits and over 30,000 inpatient admissions per year though their 15 facilities, offering a wide range of services, including complex surgeries, total joint replacements, cancer treatment, laboratory, MRI and CT diagnostics, ambulatory care, and 24/7 emergency departments.
New modules advance EHR capabilities
By integrating new Oracle Health modules with the EHR, including computerized physician order entry and closed-loop medication reconciliation, clinicians within the GBIN can more quickly and easily enter medical orders electronically, which can help reduce the risk of handwritten order errors, streamline workflows, and lower costs. The new modules can also help increase patient safety by helping to ensure the correct medication and dosage is administered to the right patient at the right point of care.
Using Oracle's Oncology EHR solutions, the GBIN is able to create a single, centralized patient record inclusive of all cancer treatment information to drive more personalized patient care.
"We are working to help the clinicians within the GBIN deliver more personalized and effective care and treatment plans for their patients across their region," said Brian Sandager, vice president, Canada, Oracle Health. "By connecting this healthcare ecosystem, Oracle Health can help them provide better experiences and health care decisions for patients while reducing administrative functions and overall operating expenses."
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Health Technology, Digital Healthcare
PR Newswire | October 06, 2023
Ricoh USA, Inc. announces the launch of RICOH Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) Enablement, the newest end-to-end managed services offering for health systems that is designed to help fuel more efficient and sustainable RPM workflows that can lead to improved patient and care delivery team experiences. RICOH RPM Enablement comes at a time when health systems are grappling with a simultaneous monumental shift to virtual care delivery and an unprecedented shortage of healthcare workers. This care worker shortage has reached a nationwide crisis level where there aren't nearly enough healthcare staff to fill vital RPM management roles, leading to alarming care gaps impacting the most vulnerable patient populations. RICOH RPM Enablement is designed to help health systems close this gap and to help lead to improved patient experiences by integrating into existing virtual care programs to support the deployment of remote patient monitoring system devices, inventory tracking, logistics, and device returns.
The healthcare worker burnout and staffing shortage – most recently worsened by COVID – is putting extraordinary constraints on health systems to staff RPM management roles, which limits their ability to scale virtual programs and impacts the standard of patient care. According to the Surgeon General, 98% of healthcare workers worry about their own burnout1, which is likely accelerating nurse retirement, fueling a shortfall of 1.1 million registered nurses1. The Mayo Clinic's research has also revealed that U.S. doctor burnout has reached an all-time high of 63%2. Additionally, 98% of clinicians are concerned that burnout can reduce quality of care and 82% of the public believes that a worker shortage will impact their health3. Technology can be the difference maker in systemic change – and clinicians agree as 50-70% welcome the change to use technologies in their work4.
"Clinicians currently spend over 50% of their working hours using EHRs5. That's their reality and a massive contributor to burnout, so our mission is centered on pivoting that time back to patient care through supporting the modernization, automation, and enablement of the care workflows that are most critical to health system's success,"
said Rory Fitzpatrick, Vice President, Industry Vertical Marketing, Ricoh North America.
RPM Enablement is the latest demonstration of our commitment. In this period of burnout crisis, the healthcare industry has an opportunity to commit to workers' emotional and physical wellbeing – and Ricoh is dedicated to supporting positive systemic change with sustainable, scalable solutions.
[Source: PR Newswire]
RPM is often considered one of the largest value drivers of virtual care with applications from primary care through chronic disease management. In fact, when RPM is part of a care plan, the Mayo Clinic has shown that 72.5% of remote patient monitoring patients comply with the care plan's tasks, including taking medications and monitoring vitals6. Further, only 9.4% were readmitted within 30 days versus 20% of patients not using RPM6.
Ricoh is uniquely positioned to help address workflow challenges resulting from the qualified healthcare worker shortage due to its large footprint and depth of managed services experience in the industry. Ricoh currently supports thousands of healthcare organizations with various aspects of their business, including 9 out of 11 of the largest for-profit hospital systems and 22 out of 32 of the largest nonprofit hospital systems, with about 3,200 facilities under its support – and is also responsible for managing over 1 million devices in the United States through more than 2,100 U.S. field technicians across various industries.
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Health Technology, Medical Devices
Business Wire | October 18, 2023
GE HealthCare announced US FDA 510(k) clearance of Allia IGS Pulse - the latest addition to the company’s image guided system (IGS) offerings. Allia IGS Pulse features a new imaging chain engineered to provide exceptional imaging at the right dose for visible impact in complex cardiology interventions regardless of patient size.
In modern healthcare today, cardiovascular disease (CVD) continues to grow in prevalence, with CVDs being the leading cause of death globally. As clinicians work to treat CVDs, cardiology procedures continue to evolve as demand for minimally invasive surgery grows. GE HealthCare is committed to helping interventional cardiologists, vascular surgeons and other interventional specialists use image guidance technologies to their full potential by optimizing workflows and providing exceptional image quality to help clinicians provide quality care to their patients, while also enabling better clinical and operational outcomes.
According to a survey of interventionalists, nearly 50% of interventional procedures are performed at working positions where clinicians have poor access to user interface functions and display.3 Designed to address these challenges, the new Allia IGS Pulse provides a personalized workspace that meets the operator’s specific needs and preferences. As part of its new image chain, the system features the first monopolar x-ray tube used to capture images for interventional procedures. This new tube is powerful, yet quieter than normal conversation4 to optimize the operating environment during a procedure. The small footprint of the new tube also helps clinicians reach steep angulation for better understanding of coronary artery anatomy, even with the 30cm detector configurations. The latest version of MyIQ technology incorporated into the system allows clinicians to select their favorite image look from four different image styles with just one click for a tailored experience at no additional dose.
In the treatment of complex cardiovascular diseases, image quality and optimized dose management regardless of patient size are also important to clinicians. With Allia IGS Pulse, interventionalists are able to get exceptional image quality for large and bariatric patients with a BMI of greater than 30. The system’s reduced pulse width and unmatched X-ray peak power helps to decrease motion blur for better visualization of moving elements such as vessels and devices. To relieve clinicians and technologists of the complex task of optimizing image quality and dose during procedures, Allia IGS Pulse takes AutoRight, the company’s intelligent image chain leveraging AI, a step further with AutoRight PLUS - the next generation of the automation platform. With AutoRight PLUS, the system now optimizes seven parameters in real time, including Focal Spot Shape. By removing the burden of manual adjustment during procedures, clinicians can stay focused on the procedure and treatment of their patients. To further optimize dose along the image chain, a unique suite of tools is also available to help support dose efficiency, dose reduction and dose awareness.
Since January 2023, Allia IGS Pulse has been in pilot operations at Clinique Pasteur - Toulouse in Toulouse, France.
“At Clinique Pasteur in Toulouse, we perform thousands of interventional cardiology procedures each year,” says Dr. Nicolas Dumonteil, Interventional Cardiologist, Clinique Pasteur, Toulouse. “As an operator of the Allia IGS Pulse system, I felt a significant and real improvement in the imaging quality, as well as a significant reduction of this noise in my daily procedures which gave me great confidence and comfort in the operating room. The system is also quite adaptable and versatile to all of my daily situations and procedures – from percutaneous coronary interventions (PCIs) to other complex and structural ones.”
says Dr Raphaël Philippart, Interventional Cardiologist, Clinique Pasteur, Toulouse.
I saw a significant improvement in the image quality, especially with obese patients and complex angioplasties - where a good visibility of my guidewire, balloons and stents are particularly important.
[Source – Business Wire]
“Interventional cardiology procedures require exceptional image quality,” says Arnaud Marie – General Manager of Interventional for GE HealthCare. “I’m excited by the addition of Allia IGS Pulse to our interventional offerings because it addresses the very things clinicians continue to tell us present challenges in their day-to-day practice. By developing new features to further evolve our core platform, we’re helping to reduce complexity and improve the operating environment so that clinicians can have a personalized workspace that better enables them to keep their focus where it belongs – on their patients.”
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