AAMI: UC Davis gets interoperable for patient, device data
SAN ANTONIO--Nurses validated more than 500 million vital sign entries sent from more than 500 devices at the University of California (UC) Davis Medical Center in 2010, explained Ted Cohen, MS, CCE, manager of clinical engineering, during a June 25 presentation at the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation conference & expo.
The Sacramento-based hospital’s integrated patient monitoring system is a far cry from the analog bedsides of the early years, Cohen said. Now, physiological monitors track patients’ vital signs, and data travel through a hospital network until ultimately ending up in an EMR, but the process starts at the bedside, he added.
From bedside patient monitors at UC Davis, information is sent to a central station, which then sends HL7 data to an interface engine every minute, Cohen said. That data is stored in Epic, the hospital’s EMR, until it’s validated by a nurse.
“Once validated, data show on a flow sheet and on the patient’s chart, and becomes part of the legal medical record,” he said.
During his presentation, Cohen explained the system installed in a new building at the UC Davis Medical Center. Built in 2010, the UC Davis Pavilion holds 188 wired Philips Healthcare bedside monitors, 11 central stations in seven departments and an emergency department with routed bedsides. Monitors within the hospital’s system emit a constant stream of ECG and other real-time data. It’s timely, reliable, and has a low-latency delivery for primary clinical alarms, according to Cohen.
The medical center uses a system called a “Customer Supplied Clinical Network,” which has some clear benefits, as well as a few disadvantages, Cohen said.
“We have lower hardware costs, we’ve eliminated cabling, and we have a robust redundant hardware platform and multiple power sources,” Cohen said. “There are some obvious disadvantages as well.”
With a common hardware platform, for example, one failure can bring down a lot of systems, and network connectivity can make the system vulnerable to malware, he explained.
The Sacramento-based hospital’s integrated patient monitoring system is a far cry from the analog bedsides of the early years, Cohen said. Now, physiological monitors track patients’ vital signs, and data travel through a hospital network until ultimately ending up in an EMR, but the process starts at the bedside, he added.
From bedside patient monitors at UC Davis, information is sent to a central station, which then sends HL7 data to an interface engine every minute, Cohen said. That data is stored in Epic, the hospital’s EMR, until it’s validated by a nurse.
“Once validated, data show on a flow sheet and on the patient’s chart, and becomes part of the legal medical record,” he said.
During his presentation, Cohen explained the system installed in a new building at the UC Davis Medical Center. Built in 2010, the UC Davis Pavilion holds 188 wired Philips Healthcare bedside monitors, 11 central stations in seven departments and an emergency department with routed bedsides. Monitors within the hospital’s system emit a constant stream of ECG and other real-time data. It’s timely, reliable, and has a low-latency delivery for primary clinical alarms, according to Cohen.
The medical center uses a system called a “Customer Supplied Clinical Network,” which has some clear benefits, as well as a few disadvantages, Cohen said.
“We have lower hardware costs, we’ve eliminated cabling, and we have a robust redundant hardware platform and multiple power sources,” Cohen said. “There are some obvious disadvantages as well.”
With a common hardware platform, for example, one failure can bring down a lot of systems, and network connectivity can make the system vulnerable to malware, he explained.