Kayseri Connects Health Information to Physicians and Nurses in Cisco-led Pilot to Improve Care

Oct 12
2009

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October 12, 2009

By Mike Stone

The medical paper chase can kill. In a life-or-death situation, where every second counts, the last thing healthcare professionals need is to track down medical records, photocopy charts and distribute printed reports.

Equally, chasing down vital staff and equipment can cost minutes that a critically ill patient simply cannot afford. But at the largest public-funded education and research hospital in Turkey, Cisco Medical-Grade Network technology is helping to speed up these tasksand save money, too.

The Kayseri Research and Training Hospital in Kayseri, a major city in Anatolia, has piloted an architecture based on the concept of Connected Health which starts delivering benefits before patients even enter the hospital doors.

For example, if a heart patient suffers a sudden cardiac problem while going about their daily business, their full medical record is now accessible over the network before the ambulance transporting them arrives at the hospital.

“Digital and mobile will bring patient safety to the foreground, improve productivity and increase the satisfaction of our patients.”

Doctor Ahmet Özyalçin, deputy head physician, Kayseri Research and Training Hospital

Using the Medical-Grade Network, a heart specialist at the hospital can teleconference with the patient’s personal doctor via a Cisco IP phone, while they both electronically access the patient’s medical data, including cardiograms, angiograms and other visual information.

By the time the patient arrives at the hospital, the emergency team already has all the background information.

Once in the emergency diagnosis room, the head nurse can access a hospital floor plan on a computer screen and quickly locate the nearest RF identification (RFID)-tagged medical equipment, and its condition, within different departments and wards.

The head nurse can then ensure that the electrocardiogram (ECG) unit is exactly where it is needed for the patient’s diagnosis. Directly after the ECG, the patient is tagged with a RFID wristband so they can be located and identified quickly using network technology.

Meanwhile, the ECG is instantly transferred over the Medical-Grade Network to the doctor’s tablet PC or mobile clinical assistant (MCA) for closer examination.

Reducing errors

The hospital physician can speak to the patient’s regular family doctor again via Cisco IP phone teleconference and a Cisco IP Communicator installed on a desktop PC. They both view the ECG while holding visual, face-to-face discussions thanks to Cisco Unified Video Advantage cameras.

The Medical-Grade Network is able to deliver the image and the medical record, and support both voice and video for the doctors to reach a consensus quickly that an angiography is needed.

So the patient’s hospital physician immediately communicates the requirement to the radiology service team, again via video conference. As the doctor chats with the patient, he is able to update the patient’s medical condition at the point of care via his MCA.

After the digital angiogram is transferred to PC, the family doctor and hospital medical teams discuss the results together, via teleconference, thus avoiding any delay in distributing physical copies.

On the basis of this meeting, the physician and medical team determine the patient’s treatment plan in a matter of hours rather than days, and further problems avoided. It is an approach that could save time, money… and possibly lives.

The advances in care are partly a result of moves by the Turkish government to improve healthcare efficiency by ensuring that vital patient information can be transmitted to healthcare providers on a timely, need-to-know basis.

Such initiatives rely on expertise and technology from Cisco and other public and private sector organizations.

Kayseri was chosen for the pilot because it is one of the country’s leading hospitals with 1100 beds and a number five ranking among all education and research hospitals in the nation. The hospital and its associated policlinics serve around 10,000 patients per day.

Its new network architecture, from the Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG), Cisco’s strategic consulting arm, is promising to sweep away a reliance on older technology in favor of connected mobile devices and instant, secure access to information, medical records and people.

Ahmet Hasanbeseoglu, a director in Cisco IBSG, Cisco’s strategic consulting arm, explains: “Currently, hospitals share information such as patient records by wired telephone, fax machine and paper-based copying.

Connecting information

“These records are, at best, stored and accessed through just one or a few more stationary desktop computers at each ward. As a result, the information is not always available at the point of decision and care, where it is most needed.

“In order to address these challenges, we believe healthcare in Turkey needs to look into connecting digitized health information to physicians, nurses and patients wherever and whenever they need them to enhance patient care, particularly in emergency cases.”

In the case of Kayseri, this means that with a secure wireless network all necessary information and services can be securely accessed and exchanged at the point of care.

Patient information is protected via a regulatory compliant wireless network so that correct treatment can be delivered as soon as possible.

Medical records, radiology images, and other forms of essential data are delivered to mobile platforms over a wired and wireless Medical-Grade Network.

This hospital information system is accessible by tablet PCs or MCAs via a pervasively-deployed Cisco unified wireless network. The MCAs enable physicians to edit patient data while they move freely around the hospital.

As part of the Cisco unified wireless network, Kayseri has deployed a context-aware healthcare system allowing it to integrate contextual information such as location temperature into medical applications to streamline the clinical workflow.

Medical devices and patients can now quickly be located with RFID tags to increase staff efficiency, reduce patient waiting times and improve patient care.

Doctor Ahmet Özyalçin, deputy head physician, says: “At Kayseri Research and Training Hospital, we have decided that digital and mobile solutions will help us bring patient safety to the foreground, improve our overall productivity and increase the satisfaction of our patients.”

The hospital’s seven-month pilot was able to show several cases where a holistic Medical-Grade Network design helped enhance the quality of service to patients, reduce possible medical errors, and even cut paper costsso much so that one policlinic has stopped using paper entirely.

“With the Connected Health vision of connecting health information, hospitals improve the access to care information, and the quality of care, while reducing their costs with connected resources of data, information, knowledge and processes,” concludes Hasanbeseoglu.

Mike Stone is a freelance journalist located in Barcelona, Spain.

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