Simon Leyland – Unified Business Communications

GE are investing significant amounts of investment into Telemedicine, epecially focused around monitoring the patient and getting the data back quickly to clinicians.  GE’s Healthcare’s website doesn’t go into too much detail but I do know that internally GE Healthcare are large users of OCS so it would be interesting to know if there has been any cross development.

The recent HealthcareIT article can be found here

GE Healthcare’s Smart Patient Room pilot at Bassett Medical Center has been approved by the site’s Institutional Review Board to begin data collection. The technology, installed as part of GE’s healthymagination initiative, aims to help providers reduce patient safety risks and improve outcomes.

“GE is developing a unique solution for the healthcare industry that helps hospitals and staff identify and mitigate patient safety risks while offering meaningful solutions to improve patient outcomes,” said Jan De Witte, president and CEO of GE Healthcare Performance Solutions. “GE’s real-time, adaptable solution will provide actionable data to healthcare providers regarding patient safety and potential medical errors, which in turn will affect the necessary behavioral changes to avoid preventable errors.”

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Found by @SteffWatson. The Hindustan Times highlights another example of how unified communications can facilitiate effecient ways of deploying healthcare to patients.  In this example a research team have explored ways to deliver Anesthesia to remote areas of Canada via video conferencing.

In a world first, doctors at McGill’s Department of Anesthesia treated patients undergoing thyroid gland surgery in Italy remotely via videoconferencing from Montreal on August 30 (10). Dr. Thomas Hemmerling and his team used the approach, which is part of new technological advancements, known as

”Teleanesthesia”. And the new approach involves a team of engineers, researchers and anesthesiologists who will ultimately apply the drugs intravenously which are then controlled remotely through an automated system.

The article can be found here.  This is very similar to the Cisco Telemedicine deployment in Russia mentioned last week.

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The UK government today brought an end to the national IT healthcare scheme stating that IT decisions should be made at a local level.  The £12billion programme has received significant criticism since inception for increasing costs, limited functionality and poor delivery.  I have never worked directly in the programme so can not comment on these criticisms but I do have several questions.

Will there be a central set of standards published that all health providers must adhere to?  To give an example all health organisations will eventually deploy Instant Messaging and Presence.  Given that all the health organisations need to communicate will there be a central standard?  What happens if a surgery has Sametime, a hospital has Jabber and the trust has OCS?  Without central standards the IT provision within the system we be chaotic.

How will de-centralised costs be tracked?  While centralised costs by their very nature create large top line figures that can attract significant attention.  De-centralised costs are extremely difficult to track and monitor, how will we know that the health organisations are procuring effectively?

Again no idea if this is the right thing for the UK government to do, I just hope they understand the ramifications of their decisions.  Strong central standards and close understanding of costs are required and it can prove very difficult to implement with many different autonomous organisations making decisions on IT infrastructure that ultimately have to work together to make the system work for patients and tax payers.

I do have one customer service question.  Technology is clearly going to play a significant role in the provision of services to patients in the future.  How within a system that is specifically and intentionally designed to provide a standard level of service to all patients can the UK government ensure a consistent level of service across the nation.  What happens if the North West implement IT 200% more effectively than the South West?   Will citizens from the South West have to travel 500 miles to the North West to receive more effective care?

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