SANTA CLARA, Calif.,
June 13, 2019 /PRNewswire/
-- More United States hospitals are responding to the influx
of connected medical devices by reorganizing legacy patient care
networks and traditional IT and Biomed departments, placing
clinical engineers and IT specialists under the same department.
These hospitals recognize that reliable medical device networks
require Biomedical and IT departments that work effectively
together to leverage digital tools that proactively scan the
network for anomalies.
Frost & Sullivan's virtual think tank, Best
Practices for Managing Patient Monitoring Networks Across the IT
and Biomedical Departments, aims to understand what best
practices successful hospitals were following to keep these
critical pieces of infrastructure functional and focused on
supporting patient care.
To download the Virtual Think Tank Executive
Summary, please visit: http://frost.ly/3ge.
Software solutions that can help to proactively monitor these
growing and increasingly complex networks should be part of every
facility's strategy for reducing the impact of outages and data
loss. The results of the survey include:
- All respondents reported that maintaining a patient monitoring
network was extremely important, but were experiencing serious
medical device network glitches and failures on a monthly
basis.
- Half of the panelists reported the Biomedical department was
responsible for maintaining medical device networks, a quarter
reported it was the IT department's job and the remainder indicated
other entities were responsible.
- 35% to 40% of hospitals have aligned their clinical
engineering department under the IT department in the facility's
reporting structure. Consolidating the two departments under a
single executive is one way to help reduce "turf war" conflict, but
shared leadership and incentives are not a substitute for
communication and planning.
- In 2011, 2017 and 2018, the ECRI Institute identified failures
in medical device and other IT networks were among the top 10
health technology hazards.
"This dependency on information makes the network one of the
most important pieces of health IT infrastructure. Consistent
network functionality allows providers to interact with clinical
information faster, thereby expediting patient care," noted
Charlie Whelan,
Transformational Health Vice President of Consulting. "As
organizations continue upgrading their clinical networks and
introducing a greater number of medical devices to their digital
environments, managing clinical networks will become increasingly
complex."
The following industry thought leaders participated in this
virtual think tank: Laura
Groselle, Manager of Clinical Engineering at Cleveland
Clinic; Richard Straub,
Director of Clinical Engineering Biomed Services at UPMC;
Christopher George,
Biomedical Engineering Supervisor at Lancaster General Hospital;
Ricardo Ortiz, Biomed Manager
at United Regional Medical Center; Tony
Alongi, System Director of Clinical Engineering at
Rochester General Hospital; and Lou
Kowatch, Senior Director of Healthcare Digital Service
at GE Healthcare.
About Frost & Sullivan
Frost & Sullivan, the
Growth Partnership Company, works in collaboration with clients to
leverage visionary innovation that addresses the global challenges
and related growth opportunities that will make or break today's
market participants. For more than 50 years, we have been
developing growth strategies for the global 1000, emerging
businesses, the public sector and the investment community. Contact
us: Start the discussion.
About GE Healthcare:
GE Healthcare is the
$19.8 billion healthcare business of
GE (NYSE: GE). As a leading
provider of medical imaging, monitoring, biomanufacturing, and cell
and gene therapy technologies, GE Healthcare enables precision
health in diagnostics, therapeutics and monitoring through
intelligent devices, data analytics, applications and
services. With over 100 years of experience in the healthcare
industry and more than 50,000 employees globally, the company helps
improve outcomes more efficiently for patients, healthcare
providers, researchers and life sciences companies around the
world. Follow us
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Pulse for latest news, or visit our
website https://corporate.gehealthcare.com/ for
more information.
Contact:
Francesca
Valente
Corporate Communications
P: +1 (210) 348.1012
E: francesca.valente@frost.com
http://ww2.frost.com
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SOURCE Frost & Sullivan