BIDMC News and Notes
10/27/2009 (11:49:24am)Tags: RFID pumps technologyComments: (0)
Instead of a floor by floor search of the hospital it recently only took two elevator rides and a walk across Brookline Avenue to track down a missing medication delivery pump.
"I renamed RFID to Really Finds Infusion Devices," David Mangan, a clinical pharmacist supervisor, says with a laugh.
RFID actually stands for Radio Frequency Identification. All of BIDMC new pumps feature this tracking device. Mangan had loaned one pump to a floor to practice accessing the medication library. But the test pump had accidentally gone into general circulation, and Mangan quickly alerted Clinical Engineering.
"We were not concerned for patient safety about this pump being in general circulation," Mangan says. "The medication library on this pump was accurate, but set up differently than what nurses are used to."
It took technology toordinator Pam Dicapua and Clinical Engineering Manager Dick Hatch, Manager 30 minutes to locate the pump thanks to RFID.
Hatch says the RFID tags on each pump send out a signal to access points around the hospital, pinpointing the floor a particular pump is on. If this system had not been in place, Clinical Engineering staff would have had to manually search each of the medical center's 1,275 pumps.
"This saved us from searching through two million square feet of office space," Mangan says.
For realizing the test pump had gone into general circulation, Mangan was honored by BIDMC's Board of Directors during their Oct. 21 meeting.
To lean more about the "Caller Outer of the Month," click here.
12/21/2009 (11:02:14am)Tags: John Halamka information technologyComments: (0)
BIDMC chief information officer John Halamka makes no bones about his childhood.
"I was constantly being called a geek or a nerd," he recalls, and Halamka is still willing to make "fashion statements" of an unusual kind.
But Halamka is a focal point of a New York Times look at how yesterday's geek is today's technology executive and how the United States would be better off if we can convince "cool nerds" to get into computing.
7/12/2010 (12:53:14pm)Tags: technology electronic medical recordsComments: (0)
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center has been recognized as one of the nation's Most Wired hospitals according to the results of the 2010 Most Wired Survey released in the July issue of Hospitals & Health Networks magazine.
Hospitals understand the importance of health information technology and the benefits of its widespread adoption, yet as a field still face significant barriers to implementation according to a newly released survey of America's Most Wired hospitals and health systems.
"BIDMC continues to work to enhance the safety and quality of healthcare through the use of advanced IT applications," says chief information officer John Halamka, MD, who noted all hospital-based clinicians at BIDMC already use electronic health records.
"By 2011, all community clinicians affiliated with BIDMC will be using a centrally hosted, interoperable, certified electronic health record, empowering them to achieve meaningful use. BIDMC's early adoption of healthcare information exchange and personal health records ensures data can be shared with patient consent for coordination of care, quality measurement, and population health.
"Our stakeholders demand increasingly sophisticated applications, requiring constant innovation. We're proud to receive this recognition."
For more, click here.
