An HIT

Extension (EI; Fort Wayne, Indiana) reported a partnership with Nexus (Valencia, California), a leading provider of advanced technology and network integration.

Nexus has made an investment to provide and satisfy all future working capital requirements and continued product development of Extension and also signed on as a channel partner for that company's entire product portfolio.

"The relationship with Nexus is important for EI not only for financial stability and growth and development capital, but it is also very important strategically, as Nexus will be an important sales and implementation wing for us," said Extension CEO Todd Plesko. "We look forward to leveraging Nexus and their considerable sales and technical resources."

Extension is an appliance-based application that marries medical applications and devices with Cisco Unified Communications. "This marriage adds value to two of the largest technology investments a hospital or group practice can make into IT – its clinical systems and its telephony systems," EI said in a statement.

It said the benefits of this solution include ROI out of existing clinical and telephony systems, improved profitability, and improved clinical mobility.

"In simple terms, EI said, Extension is the intelligent marriage of Unified Communications systems – e-mail, VoIP phone systems, SMS text message, paging systems, and more – with medical applications and devices in a hospital or medical practice

It said Extension also "tightly integrates any HL7-based medical application with Cisco Advanced Unified Communications, using standards-based protocols.

Extension comes in three suites of product offerings: Extension Messaging, Extension HealthID and Extension voiceUI.

"This is a powerful partnership between Nexus and EI, one we expect will deliver significant value to the healthcare industry," said Nexus President Deron Pearson. "Since our inception, Nexus has changed the way its customers have conducted business by leveraging the benefits of unified communications and advanced applications to increase customer intimacy, enhancing productivity and efficiency, and delivering meaningful business cost reductions."

He added, 'With the national focus now on providing similar benefits to the healthcare industry, this partnership will allow both companies to accelerate time to market, and ultimately, the direct benefits to this critical industry."