HealthcareHealthcare
Healthcare Technology Solutions from LGS Innovations
The healthcare sector faces a number of tough challenges. Keeping up with citizens’ demands for higher quality of life, and patients’ expectations for better and safer care, is increasingly difficult in the face of cost constraints, shortages of healthcare professionals, and an aging society. In addition, when delays can literally mean the difference between life and death, government agencies providing healthcare services such as NIH, HHS, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, VA Hospitals, and the military depend on communications networks to seamlessly and reliably connect medical staff to enhance patient care. However, today’s disparate communications networks can compromise response time and interrupt collaboration and clinician accessibility, contributing to increased costs and decreased quality of patient care. As a result, the U.S. Federal Government and key healthcare stakeholders (including patients, payers, researchers, and care-delivery organizations) realize that information and communications technologies play a key role in enabling healthcare system transformation. This transformation begins with the creation of a network infrastructure and the implementation of improved healthcare technology solutions that enables fast, safe, and secure communications and data exchange between patients, caregivers, and family members.
Proven Expertise: Making Disease Management and Tele-care Services a Reality
The network experts at LGS Innovations recognize the challenges facing U.S. Federal Government agencies with healthcare-related missions, and understand the immediate health IT demands of government buyers and program officials. Working with U.S. Federal Government healthcare providers, including military hospitals, battlefield medics, and VA hospitals, LGS Innovations delivers communications products and infrastructure that ultimately improve patient care.
LGS Innovations leverages our healthcare communications technology products and services to make disease management and tele-care services a reality. For example, LGS Innovations’ parent company Alcatel-Lucent worked with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) on a Bluetooth-enabled digital stethoscope to provide better and more accurate auscultation by leveraging digital sound as well as digital signal analysis.
The dynamic network solutions in the LGS Innovations healthcare portfolio provide government healthcare providers with the ability to quickly and securely send and receive information, with the highest levels of privacy and in line with HIPAA mandates. Our networks enable next generation applications that facilitate the transfer of high quality information between patients and caregivers in a secure way.
These network and communications advancements create more time for care delivery, and contribute directly to human health in the following areas:
- Enabling bedside communications and virtual visits
- Accessing patient information securely, anytime and from anywhere
- Connecting medical professionals with one another and with the patients when and where necessary
- Delivering care to remote patients
- Providing proactive disease management and preventative care virtually
- Providing collaboration between Civilian and Federal health services
- Enabling connected medicine in support of the DoD Health Information Management System (DHIMS) through Electronic Health Records (EHR) adoption
LGS Innovations provides healthcare technolgoy solutions with real-time communications systems that enable doctors, nurses, and clinicians to better manage and coordinate patient care; tele-health/tele-care service that enable proactive disease management; and mobile healthcare communications technology and collaboration platform for connecting first responders with critical medical knowledge and clinical resources. As a result, government healthcare providers have the ability to exchange clinical information in real time; connect medical professionals with one another and with patients; enhance the security, reliability, resiliency, and interoperability of the end-to-end network; improve the usability of clinical information tools; and reduce regulatory compliance costs.
Through the successful implementation of a variety of networking and infrastructure products and services with government healthcare organizations, LGS Innovations has enabled numerous key IT outcomes that contribute directly to improving human health:
- Improved patient safety
- Reduction in accidents and medical errors
- More efficient coordination between healthcare institutions
- Shift from acute care to chronic-conditions management and home care (post hospital, and independent living for the elderly)
- Faster recovery with limited impact on quality of life (reducing unnecessary transport costs and related inconveniences)
- Increased emphasis on prevention
- Increased citizen and patient empowerment (citizen-centered healthcare systems)
- Trusted security and privacy provisions
- Increased protection of personal medical data from unauthorized access
- Improved access to up-to-date personal medical records, allowing healthcare professionals to deliver the best possible treatment anytime, anywhere
- Access to best-in-class treatment for all citizens, whether they are located in urban or rural areas
Healthcare Network Transformation: Advanced Healthcare Communications Technology
The strategic and innovative use of information technology can revolutionize the way healthcare organizations deliver services today and in the future. Technological advances such as Electronic Health Records (EHR), telemedicine and other health IT applications improve quality and efficiency, and have the potential to allow more efficient sharing of information across organizations, enabling effective research and reducing the administrative costs of delivering health services.
Healthcare technology solutions enables services that improve both the delivery of healthcare and the patient experience by providing the following:
- Service Continuity: fault tolerant, high capacity, future proof
- Information Security: protecting patient privacy
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Improved Patient Services
- Pre/post care: remote diagnostics, patient follow up
- Entertainment: patients can access additional options via the TVs and networking capabilities in their rooms including more channels, VoD, gaming, vending services, etc.
- Communication: e-mail, mobile telephone
- Improved care and access to treatment at rural locations such as Indian reservations
- Accelerated processing of disability claims; reduction in errors and improved efficiency
- Other: improved billing, crediting
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Improved Medical Staff Services
- Anytime, anywhere availability of patient records, medical images, surgical procedure recordings
- Computer-assisted surgery
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Improved delivery of battlefield medicine and healthcare
- Increased bandwidth to first responders and battlefield medics provides immediate access to medical history, as well as remote collaboration with medical experts
- Bringing technologies like Smart Surgery Suite to the front line expands the lifesaving capabilities of first responders and military medics
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Improved Educational Services
- Anytime, anywhere availability of video captures, image libraries, etc.
- Live video streaming to classrooms or other campuses
- Significant cost reductions through a simplified, highly converged network
To facilitate the adoption of healthcare technological solutions in the healthcare industry, Alcatel-Lucent is a member of the innovative Center for Connected Medicine (CCM) and inaugurated its own Connected Hospital User Group (CHUG) comprised of leading practitioners from health systems who are leading their organization’s implementation of healthcare IT solutions. In May 2010, Alcatel-Lucent hosted the CHUG meeting, which focused on communications solutions for the healthcare industry. Speakers and attendees were able to discuss the health IT market and related technology trends in order to promote learning and collaboration among the healthcare-focused professionals. Aneesh Chopra, Federal CTO, delivered the keynote address and provided his vision for how U.S. Federal Government action to promote information and communication technology solutions can address the inefficiencies in the U.S. healthcare industry.
Creating the Standards for Improved, Connected Healthcare
With an annual research and development budget exceeding $3.1 billion, Alcatel-Lucent, the parent company of LGS Innovations, remains one of the biggest investors in R&D within the healthcare technology sector. The company is also an active participant in industry organizations involved in reforming health and integrating technology throughout the continuum of care. Specific organizations include:
- Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS): a cause-based not-for-profit organization exclusively focused on providing global leadership for the optimal use of IT and management systems for better healthcare. HIMSS frames and leads healthcare practices and public policy through content expertise, professional development, and research initiatives to promote information and management systems’ contributions to improve the quality, safety, access, and cost-effectiveness of patient care.
- Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI): dedicated to increasing the understanding, safety, and efficacy of medical instrumentation. AAMI is a unique alliance of members from around the world united by one mission – to increase the understanding and beneficial use of medical instrumentation through effective standards and educational programs and publications.
- European Health Telematics Association (EHTEL): a European non-profit organization that provides a platform to all European eHealth stakeholders to exchange information on eHealth.
Leveraging the leadership of our parent company, LGS Innovations offers standards-based solutions to address the healthcare-related communications challenges of the U.S. Federal Government:
- Wired and wireless data infrastructure, with security to prevent network intrusion down to the port level
- Optical networking products
- IP routing and switching, complete with multi-service capabilities to distribute real-time applications to the remotest network edges, and non-stop service functionality to ensure reliability
- Next generation enterprise telephony, with the Genesys contact center application, wired and wireless handsets, an integrated voice messaging solution, voice recording, and an interactive voice response system
- A new suite of real-time multimedia applications, including presence, collaboration, and mobility capabilities
- Professional services, including integration of third-party applications and hospital systems with network operations center support
Center for Connected Medicine: Providing the Vision for the Future of Healthcare
Alcatel-Lucent is a founding member of the innovative Center for Connected Medicine (CCM), together with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), Cerner, and IBM. The CCM presents a real-world vision for reforming healthcare by integrating technology throughout the continuum of care.
The goal of the CCM is to provide key players in the healthcare industry with new insights, methods, and healthcare technology solutions for reinventing their organizations and radically improving patient outcomes and experiences. Healthcare, business, and government leaders from around the world come to the CCM to interact with medical doctors, CIOs, hospital administrators, armed forces medical personnel, and medical product developers leading the connected medicine efforts; they leave having been informed, inspired, and engaged in a new vision of healthcare. Visitors experience firsthand the possibilities of an interconnected healthcare system – a system that shares medical information among healthcare providers, institutions, and patients, while safeguarding each patient’s right to privacy.
CCM demonstrates the following:
- How a patient-centric focus coupled with the right integration of technologies come together to create more comprehensive patient care
- Firsthand participation in a model of healthcare that can improve care and decrease costs
- Real-world examples of connected medicine in various patient settings and depicted through patient stories
- A collaborative effort between CCM’s partners to create a more connected health care environment in hospital systems
- The inefficiencies and disruptions that a disconnected environment can create in a health care organization
- The impact that connected medicine could have on the health of future generations
To enable the vision of a connected hospital, Alcatel-Lucent targets two primary areas:
- Connection: Alcatel-Lucent communications solutions are strategic assets that create a crucial link between the three main parts of any healthcare provider: the business operations, the clinical operations, and the administrative operations.
- Tele-care Services: Alcatel-Lucent healthcare solutions enable patient monitoring and assisted living by remote supervision of light to heavy chronic diseases. The Alcatel-Lucent TeleHealth Manager offers a cost-effective way to monitor chronic disease and to provide medical alerts and reminders with secure access to collected data and reports while empowering patients with proactive tools that improve their care.
TeleHealth Manager
As the health care industry looks for more efficient ways to deliver patient care, today’s telecommunications technologies have made remote patient monitoring (RPM) an affordable option for almost anyone managing a chronic medical condition. Traditional institutional care is transformed into proactive, patient-centric healthcare – improving health outcomes, clinical efficiency, and patients’ quality of life.
TeleHealth Manager from LGS Innovations offers healthcare providers a cost-effective combination of health monitoring, medical alerts, and secure access to collected data. This easy-to-deploy RPM product uses existing network infrastructure to empower healthcare professionals, patients, and families to interact simply and conveniently.
Benefits for healthcare providers include:
- Exceptionally low capital cost per patient: TeleHealth Manager utilizes off-the-shelf medical devices. In many cases, patients already own a supported medical device. If not, one-time set-up costs are generally below $500.
- Ease of use: TeleHealth Manager combines off-the-shelf medical devices, standard mobile phones, and a simple user interface. Patients can easily monitor their condition and review collected information online.
- Convenience without high cost: TeleHealth Manager is compatible with standard mobile phones from well-known vendors. Today’s extensive cell phone coverage allows patients to take readings whenever and wherever it is convenient. In many cases, patients already own a supported cell phone, which further reduces the cost of healthcare.
Benefits for end users include:
- Greater empowerment: Healthcare providers are recognizing that patient empowerment contributes to improved health outcomes. RPM can play a crucial role by giving patients easy-to-use health monitoring tools. These devices enable more robust participation in patients’ own healthcare and a normal life at home, uninhibited by their condition.
- Improved health outcomes: Studies demonstrate that RPM helps reduce HbA1c levels in patients with diabetes by up to 15 percent after just six months. With a proactive RPM solution, many negative outcomes can be controlled — and often eliminated.
OmniTouch 8660 My Teamwork™
OmniTouch 8660 My Teamwork is a software-based multimedia, multiparty communications solution that enables medical professionals to better manage and coordinate patient care. It runs on commonly available computer hardware without requiring specialized software or a virtual private network (VPN) connection. My Teamwork can establish a secure audio, Web, or HD videoconference and enable spontaneous collaboration with anyone inside or outside the organization from any telephone, from multiple video endpoint devices, from any location, and utilizing any browser.
The ability to securely collaborate in real time improves operational productivity and streamlines decision-making, which improves patient care. My Teamwork easily scales up and down to accommodate two to thousands of users, and optimizes resources by eliminating communication delays with presence-based instant messaging for ad-hoc communication. This enables increased staff productivity and allows users to do more with less.
Advocate Health Care (AHC) in Oak Brook, Ill., is recognized as one of the leading integrated healthcare delivery networks in the country. AHC uses My Teamwork™ to provide up to 14,000 AHC employees with real-time, multimedia conferencing and collaboration capabilities for its more than 200 locations across the greater Chicago metropolitan area. Now, instead of running to answer phones ringing in fixed locations, nurses receive valuable and timely alerts on their wireless handsets, resulting in more time spent with patients. Nurses also gain an element of confidence during emergencies; instead of hoping the right team members overheard an emergency page, they can get instant acknowledgment that the rest of the team is on the way through text messages.
Smart Surgery Suite and Collaboration System
LGS Innovations leverages the expertise, research and development of Alcatel-Lucent and Bell Labs to support biomedical research, health sciences and healthcare. For example, together with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), we developed the Smart Surgery Suite and Collaboration System. This solution improves acute medical care by connecting a surgery in progress with a remote specialist best suited to oversee the surgical procedure.
The objective of the Smart Surgery Suite is to provide the surgeon a high degree of quality information, usually endoscopic video information, so a specialist can oversee or direct a surgery from a remote site. Multiple parties can access an audio link to provide communication needed for the surgery without needless distractions, and both remote and local surgeons can retrieve and display patient information as well as real-time CAT scan and other telemetry information. This provides additional life-saving patient care for the current surgery, and provides the local doctors the training they require so they can perform these procedures without the need for oversight in the future.
The Smart Surgery Suite design includes a room gateway that connects to a live endoscope; encodes a real-time high-definition video stream; locally records the stream to a remote client solution, allowing a remote physician to view live video across a live network, to rewind video, and to tag video with metadata; and allows telestration from the remote client into the operating room. It minimizes bandwidth utilization and provides the onsite physician and remote expert with the ability to annotate and comment on the transmitted images in real time.
Leveraging a Legacy of Healthcare Technology Solutions Expertise and Success
Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh (CHP): Recognized as the top pediatric hospital in the use of Health IT: Provided campus-wide state-of-the-art voice, data Metro Optical Backbone (MOB), Wide Area Network (WAN), Local Area Network (LAN), and wireless infrastructure services covering all areas of voice and data services and infrastructure in CHP’s 1.7 million square foot campus consisting of nine separate buildings. The campus is connected to a Metropolitan Area Backbone via a fully redundant class of optical equipment and routers, which create the citywide University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) network over a dedicated optical ring.
University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC): Largest integrated healthcare enterprise in the U.S.: Upgraded the data infrastructure, enterprise telephony system, and contact center platforms and applications over a next-generation converged network for the entire complex.
Advocate Health Care (AHC): Top 10 largest integrated not-for-profit U.S. healthcare system: Deployed and provided services for its OmniTouch My Teamwork™ solution as part of a services transformation to provide up to 14,000 AHC employees with real-time, multimedia conferencing, and collaboration capabilities.
Genesys – Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee (BCBST): Increased productivity, improved call-center service, and provided a single unified solution. Genesys integrated all systems, and as a result, saved BCBST about 40 seconds per call and received a return on investment in just 15 months.
Genesys – Department of Veterans Affairs (VA): The VA is under pressure to reduce the backlog of claims and speed payments, even while facing unprecedented increases in educational and disability claims. Genesys intelligent Workload Distribution (iWD) was deployed to help identify and correct inefficiencies to speed processing and reduce the backlog.
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