Patient Monitoring Collaboration Enables Mobile Clinical Workflow, Combats Alarm Fatigue

Patient Monitoring Collaboration Enables Mobile Clinical Workflow, Combats Alarm Fatigue

Welch Allyn, Inc., a leading medical diagnostic device company that delivers pragmatic innovation at the point of care, has partnered with leading healthcare software development company Spok, Inc. to enable the delivery of critical patient monitoring data from Welch Allyn Connex Vital Signs Monitors (VSM) to mobile devices including smartphones, pagers, Wi-Fi phones and more.  When deployed as part of the Welch Allyn Connex Clinical Surveillance System (CSS), this combined solution creates an enterprise-wide approach to the management and prioritization of, and response to, adverse patient events, to improve patient care.

“With immediate access to patient data and alerts, clinicians are able to make informed, fast decisions on the care plans of their patients,” said Doug Linquest, senior vice president, Vital Signs and Cardiology at Welch Allyn.  “The ability to assess changes in patients’ conditions and have access to current data from anywhere on the health IT network is provided to help improve overall workflow, staff productivity, and the comfort and safety of everyone in the facility.  By utilizing Spok solutions to establish connectivity between Welch Allyn devices and mobile devices, we can help our customers meet the needs of clinicians and their patients in a very efficient way.”

The Connex CSS allows clinicians to proactively view patient status 24/7 to help them respond earlier to patient deterioration.  Depending on the patient population, providers can manage surveillance alerts through devices that best meet their needs and deploy them bed-by-bed or floor-by-floor—to promote a quieter hospital environment and reduce alarm fatigue. Incorporating Spok solutions into the Connex CSS provides intelligent clinical communication workflow solutions to hospital systems, giving them the ability to set their own rules for alert thresholds and escalated communications, and puts patient data in the hands of mobile team members within seconds of a critical alarm.

Response functionality includes:

• Integration to help ensure staff receive alarms and updates on the appropriate devices at all times based on the Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) Alert Communications Management (ACM) standard.
• Alarm filtering to direct the right alarms to the right staff members and help eliminate unnecessary alarms.
• Client assignment to enhance workflow and increase efficiency with assignment and scheduling.
• User-configured access and filtering by department to show users only what they need to know based on their role/department.

“By partnering with Welch Allyn we have created a system that routes critical alerts directly to the correct nurse, physician or rapid response team member on their mobile device. We pair that capability with escalation rules and response tracking to help ensure the highest quality care,” said Hemant Goel, chief operating officer at Spok.  “Taking advantage of mobile devices and sending messages directly to appropriate staff also allows providers to reduce noisy overhead paging—to increase patient satisfaction and potentially decrease lengths of stay.  Having fewer buzzes and beeps is designed to alleviate the growing problem of alarm fatigue for clinicians, to help improve staff satisfaction as well as patient safety.”

Building upon Welch Allyn’s market leadership position in vital signs systems, the Connex CSS is designed to electronically capture and document vitals from the bedside directly to the electronic medical record (EMR) and alert clinicians to the risk of significant adverse events that may occur in hospitals, including issues around failure to rescue, respiratory failure, falls, hospital-acquired pressure ulcers, and cardiopulmonary arrests. The Connex CSS solution offers acoustic respiration from Masimo (NASDAQ: MASI); Microstream end-tidal carbon dioxide technology from Covidien (NYSE: COV); and contact-free motion, heart rate and respiratory rate monitoring from EarlySense.