With new concers of an H1N1 flu outbreak this fall, healthcare IT vendors are offering products designed to help healthcare providers do everything from track flu outbreaks to deal with pandemic emergencies.
Orion Health, the New Zealand-based provider of clinical workflow and integration technology with an office in Santa Monica, Calif., has integrated its Rhapsody solution with the Application Extension Platform and Integrated Services Routers from San Jose, Calif.-based Cisco to create a pre-configured, secure solution for public health reporting.
The new medical data exchange solution, Rhapsody AXP, was unveiled at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Public Health Information Network PHIN Conference 2009 last month in Atlanta. Company officials say Rhapsody AXP will allow healthcare providers to automatically share information with health agencies, partners and healthcare information exchanges.
“Rhapsody AXP helps health facilities of any size to contribute to the national preparedness effort by streamlining and automating the process for data exchange using PHIN standards to report to the CDC,” said Paul Viskovich, Orion’s president of North American and EMEA operations. He said the platform would appeal especially to smaller clinics and remote healthcare providers.
Designed to be deployed with minimal IT resources within a hospital or clinic’s reporting system, Rhapsody AXP formats all relevant data so that it can be shared between offices and organizations or across regions, allowing the CDC and other federal, state and local agencies to detect patterns of common disease symptoms and identify outbreaks as they develop.
Kathy English, Cisco’s director of global healthcare solutions, said the company’s AXP and ISR tools assist Rhapsody in meeting the demands of providers to transmit reports as well as receive public health alerts. The use of open-standards software, she added, allows Rhapsody to be integrated with most health information systems.
Also, the General Data Company, a Cincinnati-based developer of barcode-based error-proofing and tracking system solutions, has released the E.V-Trax Employee Vaccination Tracking System, a mobile application designed to help healthcare organizations administer employee immunizations and track the immunization status of all employees. The system, initially developed for a teaching hospital, uses a handheld computer equipped with a barcode scanner, magnetic strip reader and special software to collect immunization information, and then securely uploads that data to a central SQL database.
“As hospitals and healthcare facilities gear up for H1N1 and flu season, this is an automated solution that can be installed with almost no interruption to the caregiving process,” said General Data founder and President Peter Wenzel. “Healthcare providers will be able to know who’s been vaccinated and when, and they’ll be able to better utilize those personnel with no disruption to patient care, time, or cost.”
The Toronto-based AnyWare Group, meanwhile, has launched the ROAM Disaster Preparedness solution, which is designed to allow healthcare professionals, first responders and others to access applications and data from mobile devices during emergencies.
“Easy and secure access to information and resources – especially in pandemic situations where facility access may be limited – is vital to a healthcare provider’s ability to deliver continuity in patient care,” said Robert Lalonde, AnyWare’s CEO.
ROAM Disaster Preparedness has been installed at Quinte Health Care, a network of four hospitals located in rural Ontario.
“Lessons learned from SARS as well as other isolated incidents of facility closures due to disease outbreaks reinforce that secure and timely remote access should be an integral component of any pandemic planning program for hospitals and healthcare facilities,” said J.R. Dick, Quinte, Health Care’s director of information technology.
