Becker's Hospital Review

8 Sponsored by: M edical devices are woven tightly into the fabric of the hospital environment. Every day, clinicians rely on patient monitors to deliver quality care. To ensure these devices are always available, IT departments and facilities management teams work behind the scenes on maintenance and deployment. Becker's Hospital Review recently spoke with Harsh Dharwad, chief technology officer of the medical technology company Nihon Kohden, to learn how thoughtful medical device design can address a variety of hospital pain points, ranging from clinical and IT workflows to costly inefficiencies that significantly affect the bottom line. The 'premium as a standard' difference When hospitals invest in patient monitors, access to certain pieces of the device's functionality only become available after the purchase of additional specialized modules. When monitor capability is limited, it can be difficult to quickly transition equipment to different areas of the hospital. Monitors purchased for the neonatal intensive care unit, for example, may not have the appropriate features for the emergency department. Facility teams must track each monitor's capabilities and match equipment with department needs. To help hospitals address this pain point, Nihon Kohden adopted a "premium-as-standard" philosophy. Every monitor arrives equipped with all functionality enabled by default. Hospitals can seamlessly transition equipment between care areas with a wide range of patient acuity levels. "'Premium-as-standard' is cost efficient for hospitals. It gives them maximum flexibility to deploy monitors wherever they are needed," said Mr. Dharwad. Eliminate paper, reduce clinician burden At most hospitals, patient monitoring systems and EHR platforms are integrated. Patient data automatically flows into medical records, eliminating the need for clinicians to update charts manually. This has been a big-time saver for hospitals. The documentation of some test results, however, has escaped digitization. "There may be a certain [test] strip that clinicians feel is important to the patient's condition and they want to send that information to the EHR record," said Mr. Dharwad. "Today, some hospitals print the paper strip from the monitor, scan it, create a PDF and upload the PDF manually into the EHR. These manual steps are performed for thousands of patients." Seemingly small but meaningful changes to devices can address this situation. Nihon Kohden recently implemented "Send to EMR" functionality, which enables clinicians to simply press a button on either the in-room monitor or the central monitor. Test strip information is sent automatically to the patient's health record. The result is more efficient care, plus thousands of saved dollars related to printing and scanning. Relieve space constraints and IT maintenance workloads As technology continues to expand into every corner of healthcare, many hospitals are struggling to derive maximum value from IT investments without increasing the physical IT footprint. In the area of patient monitoring, it's common for a single hospital to have six or seven applications. These may include gateways to support electrocardiograms, pagers, EHR and patient monitoring integrations, and more. Traditionally, each application has required its own server. "In integrated delivery networks with multiple hospital campuses, each campus may have six or seven applications and each needs a server. It becomes quite burdensome to devote physical space to storing, racking and running these servers," noted Mr. Dharwad. One promising solution is an enterprise gateway that unifies all patient monitoring applications into one server box. Hospitals can then license whatever applications they need. This immediately reduces the physical IT footprint and the IT maintenance workload from seven boxes to one. Replace device-centric data with patient-centric insights Today's "smart" medical devices support bidirectional communication with other systems. These devices generate huge volumes of data, but physicians and clinicians simply can't consume it all. The challenge for manufacturers is transforming device data into actionable, concise information that clinicians can act on. "Data is very device dependent," according to Mr. Dharwad. "Traditionally, clinicians had to glean information from different devices and tie it together themselves. That won't work today; clinicians are overwhelmed by data. Manufacturers must leverage memory and computer power and present data from multiple devices in a patient-centric way." One key to actionable insights is combining device information with the patient context. For example, clinicians may set an alarm if a patient's heart rate exceeds a certain level. However, an elevated heart rate may not be abnormal if the patient just took a particular medication. "We must provide more contextual information so clinicians can utilize their subject matter expertise and take appropriate action," Mr. Dharwad said. The next step is providing predictive information to physicians and clinicians based on trends in patient data. Conclusion Patient monitors and other medical devices are ubiquitous in the hospital ecosystem. To address device-related pain points, customer- focused manufacturers are engaging proactively with their hospital partners. Looking ahead, some are exploring the digital health space to complement devices. "Nihon Kohden sees itself evolving from a medical device manufacturer to a medical technology company. With access to so much different patient information, we can leverage that for the greater good of hospitals and patients. I think this is the future of healthcare for medical device manufacturers," Mr. Dharwad said. n Customer-focused device design: How Nihon Kohden is eliminating hospital pain points Founded in Japan in 1951, Nihon Kohden is a leading manufacturer, developer and distributor of medical electronic equipment, with subsidiaries in the U.S., Europe and Asia. The company's products are now used in more than 120 countries, and it is the largest supplier of electroencephalography products worldwide. A pioneer in transformational healthcare technology, Nihon Kohden has envisioned, designed and produced revolutionary devices, such as pulse oximeters, arrhythmia analysis, low-invasive blood volume monitoring and wireless patient monitoring. In the U.S., the company is a trusted source for patient monitoring, sleep assessment, neurology and cardiology instrumenta- tion solutions, and has been rated No. 1 in patient monitoring or telemetry for more than 10 consecutive years (MD Buyline). For more information, visit us.nihonkohden.com.

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