A Diagnostics & Imaging Week

Hoana Medical (Honolulu) reported new partnerships with a large healthcare system in Pennsylvania, the Veterans Administration (VA) with VA hospitals in Florida and Nebraska, and the U.S. Army to improve patient safety in acute-care hospitals.

Hospital experience has shown that rapid response teams (RRT) are not effective if the patient is found too late - many times patients are found deceased. Hoana's LifeBed Patient Vigilance System identifies patients as they begin to deteriorate and immediately notifies the hospital nursing staff with no visible connection to the patient whatsoever.

The LifeBed has experience on more than 15,000 acute-care medical-surgical patients around the country and has shown that errors and accidents don't discriminate between social or economic classes; it can happen to anybody, anywhere.

This partnership, referred to as PIMA (for Personal Intelligent Medical Assistant), will examine how finding a patient in distress early reduces the risk of negative outcomes, injury or death, and reduces the cost to the hospital. Although the VA recently awarded Hoana a federal supply contract to outfit VA hospital beds at $16.20/day/bed, this program is funded with $1.7 million from the U.S. Army Medical Research Command and the Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center.

"This partnership is a tremendous testament to the growing awareness of patient safety and the remarkable commitment of these visionary partners to make a difference," said Patrick Sullivan, PhD, CEO of Hoana Medical.

With nearly 40% of all unexpected hospital deaths occurring on the med-surg floor, continuous patient vigilance is a rapidly growing trend. Hospitals across the country are working to implement solutions that meet the Joint Commission's patient safety goals for 2009, while enhancing nurse and patient satisfaction.

In other grants/contracts news: CompuMed (Los Angeles) a medical informatics company serving the healthcare community with diagnostic software solutions, reported a contract to provide electrocardiogram (ECG) remote interpretation services for state correctional facilities in Arizona through the Arizona Department of Corrections (ADC).

CompuMed will provide remote cardiac screening on an as needed basis for more than 30,000 detainees at the Department's correctional facilities statewide. CompuMed now has 44 CardioGram systems at correctional sites throughout Arizona. The ADC agreement contains options for multiple renewals/extensions.

CompuMed's traditional core business is providing remote ECG interpretation terminals and related services to medical facilities that may not have access to physicians trained and qualified to interpret ECG results.

Customers for the company's CardioGram system are typically correctional facilities, ambulatory surgery centers, occupational health clinics and physician offices. The CompuMed system significantly reduces healthcare costs by providing remote cardiac screening at the point of care. Another key advantage is an optional feature that automatically sends ECG results to a trained cardiologist for an over-read when the results are abnormal.