A Medical Device Daily

Wayport (Irving Texas) a provider of public and private network support and integration for healthcare facilities, said that a new agreement has been reached with Berkshire Health Systems (BHS; Pittsfield, Massachusetts), to provide wireless Internet service in its two hospitals: Berkshire Medical Center and Fairview Hospital. Access to the service will be available throughout each hospital, and is targeted toward enhancing the patient and visitor experience.

“Keeping our patients and their visitors connected is becoming increasingly important,” said Joe Diver, chief information officer for Berkshire Health Systems. “The experience people have at our hospitals is important, and we know that constant access to the Internet is almost a way of life. Many people not only want to stay abreast of what is going on at the office, but they also want to stay connected with their family and friends. This is why we think it so important to provide this service at no fee.”

Wayport said many hospitals want to provide patient and visitor access, but face various obstacles in developing the network to do so. The company said it can provide public access, while maintaining HIPAA compliance and internal security, which is crucial. Additionally, Wayport provides 24/7 user support for anyone who needs assistance connecting to the wireless network.

“Berkshire Health Systems is on the leading edge of providing the highest levels of patient and visitor satisfaction,” said Kevin McKeand, VP and general manager, Wayport Healthcare. “They understand the importance of keeping patients and visitors connected when in the hospital and are leading their industry with this technology.”

In other contract news, Exogen (Chicago) a business solutions company focused on creating value for healthcare providers and manufacturers, and a subsidiary of Technology Solutions Co. (TSC; Chicago), reported that it has been chosen by North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System (Lake Success, New York) to manage the data migration and consolidation of medical image data from its legacy systems to its enterprise medical image storage system.

Exogen’s Data Certainty solution combines its newly developed technology with value-focused professional services to provide what it said is the industry’s “most comprehensive approach to analyzing, characterizing, cleansing and ensuring the migrating of legacy medical image data into a consolidated enterprise approach.”

“Exogen’s Data Certainty approach is unique,” said John Bosco, chief information officer for North Shore-LIJ Health System. “Unlike other data-migration solutions we have used in the past or have investigated, Exogen takes a very holistic and complete approach to ensuring the integrity and migration of our data. Prior to moving one pixel of data, they were able to characterize our legacy data, tell us what was good and bad, what could be cleansed, and how fast the migration would take. This compares to the industry norm where vendors either provide you a piece of software to move the data yourself or worse, they begin moving data without regard to its integrity or impact to the organization.”

“We are pleased to have been chosen by this health system to assist with their data management needs,” said Milton Silva-Craig, president/CEO of Exogen. “We look forward to helping North Shore-LIJ leverage their medical image data in a more meaningful manner.”

North Shore-LIJ Health System said it is the nation’s third-largest, non-profit, secular healthcare system.