CHI Franciscan Health System’s eight hospitals are scattered across Western Washington but they are all tethered to a virtual hub located in a former bank building in Tacoma. In this clinical operations center, teams of technicians, nurses, and caregivers use technology to provide an extra set of eyes across its regional health system, from miles away, for busy physicians and nurses on the ground.
Inpatient Care
Robotic Nurse Being Developed To Assist Infectious Patients
Trina — which stands for Tele-Robotic Intelligent Nursing Assistant — is a first-generation nursing robot that is being built by a collaboration of Duke University’s engineering and nursing students and staff. Since the Ebola outbreak in 2014, new technologies, including robots, are being tested as alternatives to human contact to diminish risks for providers as they care for patients with infectious diseases. Funded by a National Science Foundation grant, Duke officials started working on the $85,000 robot about a year-and-a-half ago.
Sixteen Features of the Safe Hospital Room
AARP, the nation’s largest organization for people age fifty and older, has illustrated an inpatient hospital room focused on patient safety, identifying 16 features used by innovative hospitals around the country.
Headwalls Versus Booms in Intensive Care Units
A key decision when planning an intensive care unit is whether to use a flat headwall or a ceiling-mounted boom for power, medical gases, and monitoring and communications systems. The traditional headwall system provides consistency and predictability in a room’s configuration and the location of equipment and supplies. A boom provides added flexibility in how the room is configured and provides easier access to the patient’s head and electrical/gas wall connections. Headwalls range in cost from $6,000-$8,000 while dual-arm booms may cost from $25,000 to $30,000. Factors to be considered include patient acuity; frequency of full-head access; whether procedures will be performed at the bedside; and budget.
Source: GenesisNews, March 2016. [www.genesis-planning.com]
Patient Room 2020 Prototype Unveiled
NXT Health opened a full-scale prototype of the Patient Room 2020 at the DuPont™ Corian® Design Studio in New York city. Over an 18 month period, NXT enlisted the support of 30 industry partners to build the prototype — a truly collaborative process where each partner integrated its products into the overall design. The prototype has now been transformed from a virtual rendering to a physical space.