A Medical Device Daily
Hill-Rom (Batesville, Indiana) and Radianse (Andover, Massachusetts) reported a strategic partnership agreement to integrate the Radianse real-time location system (RTLS) into Hill-Rom's NaviCare Nurse Call system. With this move, Hill-Rom intends to extend its services in healthcare locating beyond staff tracking to remove financial and technical obstacles for healthcare customers as they consider high-precision, enterprise-wide RTLS for equipment, patients and staff.
More than 800 healthcare customers now use Hill-Rom's integrated locating solution. The addition of Radianse RTLS as an option for future implementations follows an independent verification of Radianse location accuracy and precision reliability.
"This partnership is truly an exciting opportunity," said Mike Gallup, general manager of Hill-Rom IT Solutions. "Every hospital must have a nurse call system. Soon, healthcare providers will be able to enjoy the benefits of locating staff, patients, and equipment all off of one integrated nurse communications platform from Hill-Rom. This will help them know when and where equipment, patients and staff move and interact – real-time visibility that can increase caregiver effectiveness and enhance patient safety."
Having Radianse locating technology integrated into the existing NaviCare Nurse Call platform will save a healthcare facility from having to invest in parallel technology. It will offer a key differentiation for the Hill-Rom product and enable the extension of the Radianse RTLS to layer in other applications such as asset tracking, patient tracking and real time alerts. Ultimately, it will translate to increased visibility, cost savings and efficiency improvements, according to the company.
"As a result of our collaboration with Hill-Rom, enterprise-wide location will be within the means of virtually every healthcare organization," said Steve Schiefen, president/CEO for Radianse. "Together, we are working to remove the financial and technical obstacles to making RTLS an IT priority. The potential for applications that can use real-time location intelligence is unlimited, and we look forward to seeing the future unfold."
In other agreements/contracts news, Upp Technology (Downers Grove, Illinois) will provide a centralized emergency management solution to the Tennessee Department of Health that will improve the availability of patient information and the efficiency of an emergency response. Already using Upp's IRMS-Go-Kits, to provide mobile emergency response solutions, Tennessee is now looking to add a centralized server to link the Go-Kits together in the field. This centralized approach is designed to provide accurate, reliable and responsive patient tracking, inventory management and distribution of critical resources during an emergency.
The Go-Kits provide a Mobile Logistics Platform for Upp's emergency response solution suite. Deployed and operational in 15 minutes, the Go-Kit contains everything necessary to run inventory, asset and resource management, and patient treatment facilities whenever they're needed. Already proven successful with the recent distribution of H1N1 anti-virals, this extension of Upp's irms|EM solution enables the command and control personnel of Tennessee to monitor their distribution of emergency supplies in real-time.