Medical Device Daily Executive Editor

Integration.

That's one of the more medium-sized (non-acronymed) words in healthcare information technology (HIT) these days.

With the computer and Internet explosions, companies have rolled out a wide variety of HIT products, but the field is still in its adolescence, and a majority of products in the sector too often tend to address this or that application, without talking to or even shaking hands with one another.

For full maturity of this sector, the next step is to put them together, both for more seamless approaches and, most importantly in the hospital, for more efficient care of patients.

That is the emphasis being bannered, for instance, by Royal Philips Electronics (Andover, Massachusetts), with its announcement this week of the availability of its HeartStart MRx monitor/defibrillator that can now be plugged into its IntelliVue Clinical Network.

The newly integrated system will be showcased at the annual meeting of the Health Information Management System Society (Chicago), the major event for HIT professionals, throughout next week in New Orleans. But Philips will be just one of a mega-wave of companies, large and small, attempting to gain larger slices of the HIT pie.

With roll-out of the HeartStart MRx/IntelliVue integration, Philips is addressing the tangle of wires, tubes and hookups that often makes for labor-intensive activity but doesn't help caregivers to focus much on the patient hooked up with all those wires and tubes.

Philips says the new functionality enables the MRx to serve as a wireless transport monitor/defibrillator or cardiac bedside monitor/defibrillator with built-in pacing, synchronized cardioversion and defibrillation capabilities. Using the HeartStart MRx, hospitals will be able to transport patients who require cardiac monitoring or therapy between departments or within the same unit without changing equipment. The MRx can also be used at the bedside in departments that would benefit from having both centralized surveillance and cardiac therapy at their fingertips.

"You no longer need to bring two devices, it saves equipment and things to carry," Brendan Shea, product manager in the cardiac care division of Philips, told Medical Device Daily.

And he quotes a nurse who told him, "there's less equipment between the patient's legs" — rather important, especially if this patient is high-risk, on the way to the cath lab, or experiencing a life-threatening cardiovascular event.

"Now when you go on these high-risk cardiac transports, the patient is already being paced, or may need defibrillation, now you have this network connectivity," Shea said.

He added: "Defibrillator monitors traditionally monitor the patient in real time, transmit the data after the event. Now you can use it now, transmit later — that changes the paradigm, monitoring and streaming the information in real time.

Shea noted that other major competitors have similar technologies but not integrated. "For the critical care environment, the ability to transport, defibrillate and view the data at a central station is the best of all worlds," said Lynn Cochran, Director of Cardiovascular In-Patient Services at Edward Hospital and Health Services (Naperville, Illinois). "And since the HeartStart MRx uses the same cables and leads as IntelliVue bedside monitors, transports are faster and easier. You just remove the cables from the bedside, plug them into the MRx and away you go."

Michael Miller, senior VP of Cardiac Care for Philips, said, "Since it combines two key devices, a monitor and a defibrillator, hospital staff will have less equipment to maintain and carry, and will be able to provide constant surveillance and accurate documentation for their patients."

Another major firm at the conference will be Siemens (New York) which won't simply have a large exhibit space but will provide a tsunami-type strategy characteristic of the big players.

It will offer what it calls "a rotating lineup of in-booth customer presentations" in round-the-clock fashion on every day of the conference.

Its speakers also will be featured as part of the HIMSS core education sessions and roundtables, Nursing Informatics Symposium, and Regional Health Information Organization (RHIO) Symposium. Presentations will range from measuring vendor performance and patient safety using IT to workflow demonstrations by company customers.

While the conference gears up on Monday, pre-conference activities on Sunday will include a Health IT Venture Fair, which HIMSS says "will provide a forum for emerging companies wishing to obtain capital and increase their visibility among the health IT investment community.

Early activities at HIMSS will include presentations by Dr. Robert Kolodner, interim national coordinator and the Leadership Team from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), and Newt Gingrich. Gingrich will be speaking on how health information is critical to building a 21st century intelligent health system, from leadership and large-scale change to politics and private sector innovation — his presentation delivered exclusively, however, to chief information officers attending the conference.

Another marketing device often seen at the conference is the survey roll-out strategy, with Time Warner Cable Business Class (Stamford, Connecticut) to release results of a poll concerning how customers view the security of electronic health records.

"Healthcare providers can't ignore these consumer concerns," said Marc Holland, program director of Health Provider Research for Health Industry Insights, commissioned to do the survey.

Not surprisingly, Time Warner Cable Business Class, a division of Time Warner cable, provides a variety of electronic products as well as "managed security and storage."

Underlining the fact that the conference is being held in storm-torn New Orleans, HIMSS said it made its conference commitment to the city "with a strong intention to make a significant, long-lasting and immediate contribution to improved healthcare and technology in the local community."

Among those efforts, it said it is working with Common Ground Health Clinic — a free clinic in the Algiers section of the city that sees more than 200 patients per week, many of whom do not have health insurance — donating to it money and hardware through its philanthropic society HIMSS Foundation. The foundation also is administering the HIMSS Katrina Phoenix funding to rebuild medical practices devastated by Hurricane Katrina.

"While most of us were feeling helpless watching the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina unfold on television and wondering what we could do, the Common Ground folks were already on the move, helping hundreds of people receive emergency care," said Pat Wise, HIMSS VP and director of EHR initiatives.

HIMSS has established a web site, www.himss07.org/commonground/index.aspx, for those wanting to make donations online.