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.