HP announces at the HIMSS11 conference that it will expand its Digital Hospital convergence platform and collaborate with Greenway on custom EHRs.
Hewlett-Packard has rolled out a new version of its Digital
Hospital telemedicine platform, a
virtual-health management application and an agreement with EHR (electronic
health records) provider Greenway Medical Technologies to offer custom EHRs.
In developing its latest digital
health products, HP aims to offer a continuity of care inside and outside
the hospital, what it calls the "instant-on enterprise." The company
made the announcements at the HIMSS11 (Healthcare Information and Management
Systems Society 2011) conference in Orlando, Fla.
An "instant-on enterprise" involves a converged infrastructure,
enterprise security and cloud services. It also means improved coordination and
collaboration and immediate access to care, according to Scott Lundstrom, group
vice president of IDC Health Insights.
"Sweeping regulation and the changing health care landscape are
encouraging providers to reorganize into care teams that improve coordination
and collaboration across the continuum of health care settings," Lundstrom
said in a statement. "HP's approach to 'instant-on health care' should
help to address and simplify the transition health care organizations will need
to achieve this level of efficiency."
Digital Hospital 2.0 and V-health (Virtual Health Management) are key
components of HP's update to its digital health portfolio.
HP has added a new framework and formal reference architectures to its Digital
Hospital, a technology-convergence
platform that allows for health care professionals to access health information
in real time inside and outside a hospital.
The Digital Hospital
involves high-availability servers, tiered grid-based storage, wireless
networking infrastructure, location-based services and sensors, medical device
integration, messaging and alerts, along with software and consulting. It also
includes bedside computing and self-service kiosks, HP reports.
"We're really moving toward something called digital health, and
digital health is about orchestrating care within the four walls of a hospital
and bringing HP's very broad technology footprint to enable and orchestrate
care outside the four walls of a hospital and ultimately to the consumers in a
mobile context," Harry Kim, HP's senior director of enterprise business
health care, told eWEEK.
Meanwhile, V-health provides tools to allow health care facilities to link
with teams caring for patients outside the hospital, such as in the home,
rehabilitation centers, nursing homes or a specialist's office.
The Digital Hospital
and V-health initiatives, announced on Feb. 23, will bring coordinated care for
an entire health care ecosystem, HP reports.
HP also announced that it will work with EHR provider Greenway Medical
Technologies to offer customized EHR applications to automate health care
workflows, boost efficiency and increase quality of care, HP reports.
HP's hardware, including PCs, tablets and imaging products, will work with
Greenway's PrimeSuite 2011 EHR, allowing companies to choose an EHR based on
their health care environment and retrieve data in real time.
In the cloud or onsite, doctor's offices will be able to access patient
charts, receive clinical alerts and manage their practices using functionality
for accounts receivable, registering, scheduling and reporting, according to
HP.
As part of the Feb. 17 announcement with Greenway, the EHR vendor's
PrimeSuite application will work with HP's EHReady
platform, a full-service medical records toolkit. In October, Greenway added
verbal recognition and digital-imaging capabilities to PrimeSuite
2011 EHR.
HP also announced a program with telemedicine provider LifeBot to provide
secure remote mobile EMS (emergency medical services) on
an HP Slate 500 tablet PC and HP TouchSmart 9100 all-in-one PC. Paramedics will
be equipped with video cameras to beam video to a hospital, and physicians will
use HP Slates to follow patients, Chris Mertens, vice president of health care
for HP's personal systems group, told eWEEK.
The combined HP and LifeBot technology will provide live transmission of
critical patient physiological data.
Meanwhile, HP has collaborated with visual technology provider Canvys and
PACS (picture archiving and communication system) firm Medweb to allow
high-quality images to be viewed remotely in the cloud.
Brian T. Horowitz is a freelance technology and health writer as well as a copy editor. Brian has worked on the tech beat since 1996 and covered health care IT and rugged mobile computing for eWEEK since 2010. He has contributed to more than 20 publications, including Computer Shopper, Fast Company, FOXNews.com, More, NYSE Magazine, Parents, ScientificAmerican.com, USA Weekend and Womansday.com, as well as other consumer and trade publications. Brian holds a B.A. from Hofstra University in New York.
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