10Meters News Service
February 1, 2002 – A new hospital under construction in Indiana takes the idea of specialized medicine to heart – and in the process showcases wireless information technologies as a new-era healthcare solution.
Called the Indiana Heart Hospital, the $60 million, 210,000-square-foot facility will be the first hospital in the United States to store, record and display patient data electronically. The information will be accessible to staff inside, or outside, the facility.
"We're so totally committed to a paperless, filmless and wireless environment that we won't even have nursing stations," said David Veillette, CEO of the new facility, a joint venture of the Indianapolis-based Community Health Network and U.S. cardiologists and cardiovascular surgeons.
"Instead, all our caregivers can input and retrieve patient information right at the bedside, which helps them deliver safer, more accurate patient care," he said.
Driving the hospital's paperless environment: the Centricity Information System from GE Medical Systems, an enterprise-based IT solution that includes wireless 802.3 networking technology from Symbol Technologies, Inc. The GE solution also includes handheld communication based on PocketPC technology.
The hospital, slated to open at the end of 2002 in Indianapolis, is designed to answer what Viellette calls a "crucial" fact of the future for the healthcare industry: staffing shortages and the aging of the baby-boomer population.
Noting that the average nursing age is 45 and older and that fewer people are coming into the field, Viellette said, "We have to find more efficient ways to take care of three times as many patients ... The only way to do that is with information technology."
For more information on the Indiana Heart Hospital, visit http://www.ehealthindiana.com.
GE Medical Systems provides healthcare systems with advanced software and technologies to improve their clinical performance. The company last year purchased Data Critical Corporation, which develops wireless telemetry and communications technologies for the healthcare industry. The acquisition included VitalCom, a developer of software and wireless patient monitoring networks.
Wireless technologies for the heathcare sector is expected to become a $2 billion industry within five years, says GE Medical Systems. According to GE Medical, the number of clinicians using wireless tools will increase from 1 in 100 today to 1 in five by 2004.
For more information, visit the GE Medical Systems Web site at www.gemedical.com.
