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Introduction and Overview |
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 Inpatient health care delivery involves a complex set of processes that requires interdisciplinary teamwork among physicians, nurses, unit secretaries, and ancillary staff. Many health care organizations are aware that their current processes are inefficient, resulting in numerous incidences or miscommunications and errors.
To counteract this problem, health care organizations have started to undertake enterprise-wide clinical redesign projects. However, new processes that allow caregivers to focus first on their primary job functions require new technology to support their mobile interactions.
Often these interactions are not at a nursing station or near a phone, and the new technology must support them wherever they are.
Ongoing, instant communications between mobile, dispersed hospital staff is critical to improved quality of care, effective operations, and productivity in hospitals. Many communications options in use in hospitals today, such as overhead paging, in-house pagers, and in-building phones, do not provide instant communications among staff.
Rather, when these systems are used, there is a significant amount of time wasted as personnel spend time tracking down each other through paging or playing “telephone tag.” This inability to reach anyone instantly increases stress levels and reduces productivity.
In recognition of the need for better and more direct communications between health professionals, Vocera Communications has developed a wearable instant communications badge system using an 802.11b (WiFi) wireless local area network to support instant mobile voice communications and messaging.
The system easily integrates with existing PBX and Nurse Call systems and incorporates many of the key features of wireless phones, text pagers, high quality speakerphones, two way radios, and push-to-talk capable cell phones.
The system has been implemented in a number of acute care delivery facilities and is proving to reduce runaround time associated with legacy communications system. Additionally, it is decreasing noise disruptions in the wards by reducing the need to use overhead pagers. This leads to an improvement in the overall environment for both staff and patients.
With a touch of one button and natural voice commands, the Vocera Communications System instantly connects people to other people or to entire groups, so they can make decisions and act quickly anytime they’re in a building or campus environment with an installed wireless network. |
