Apr 21 2010
InfoLogix, Inc. (Nasdaq: IFLG), a leading technology provider of enterprise mobility solutions for the healthcare and commercial industries, announced today it has successfully launched a customized HealthTrax™ mobility solution for University Health System's 604-bed acute care hospital and 20 ambulatory clinics in San Antonio, Texas.
University Health System turned to InfoLogix to help identify new ways to increase efficiencies, improve patient safety, and decrease costs. For the first phase of the initiative, the hospital engaged Delta Health, an InfoLogix company, to conduct a strategic cost management assessment to carefully analyze its existing clinical workflow, identify opportunities for improvement, and define management action plans to achieve increased operating effectiveness.
During phase two, University Health System worked with InfoLogix to automate key aspects of its clinical operations. Specifically, they sought to eliminate the need for medical staff from nursing and pharmacy to manually capture sensitive temperature data for refrigerated medications in both its inpatient and ambulatory facilities. The hospital's traditional data collection process relied exclusively upon hospital staff to record refrigerator temperatures, as often as every hour, to ensure highly-fragile medications were stored at safe temperatures. This cumbersome process was not only subject to human error, but also minimized the amount of quality time nurses and pharmacy staff could spend with patients.
The need to manually record refrigerator temperatures also presented a potential safety concern for ambulatory clinics which weren't staffed 24-hours a day. These clinics did not have a reliable system for monitoring temperatures throughout the night nor did they have an adequate backup system to respond to sudden power outages. In the event refrigerator temperatures deviated from their optimal threshold, expensive medications would have to be destroyed and replaced. To address these issues and better comply with the highly-regulated storage requirements, the hospital identified automating the temperature monitoring process for its 172 cold storage refrigerators as a top priority.
In addition, as part of the hospital's ongoing focus on increasing operational efficiencies, University Health System wanted to decrease the amount of time its busy clinicians spent tracking down transient medical assets such as infusion pumps for patients. With more than seven hundred infusion pumps constantly circulating throughout the hospital, the lack of real-time location data proved to be a frustrating challenge for BioMed staff who spent inordinate amounts of time tracking down the critical supplies. The hospital also discovered that some clinicians were requesting unnecessary purchases of additional infusion pumps as colleagues sometimes "hoarded" the vital supplies they needed.
To help University Health System address these operational challenges, InfoLogix designed a real-time, interactive, web-based solution based on the hospital's unique technology and workflow requirements. The HealthTrax mobility solution draws upon Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technologies, a powerful software engine, and a robust wireless network to collect and analyze real-time information, alleviating the need for clinicians to manually perform tedious data-collection and tracking tasks. Through a network of tiny RFID transmitter tags, HealthTrax makes real-time information continuously available at the enterprise-level.
"InfoLogix helped us achieve dramatic new operating efficiencies which have improved employee morale and enabled us to provide better care to our patients. By freeing our clinicians from the tedious data-collection tasks they used to perform on a daily basis, they're significantly more productive," noted Bill Phillips, vice president and CIO of University Health System. "In addition, as a result of the automated reports we can now generate from HealthTrax, our administrators have valuable information at their fingertips which can help them meet our rigorous regulatory requirements and make better, more informed operational decisions."
"InfoLogix is uniquely positioned to help hospitals throughout North America transform their operations, with over 90 clinical practitioners on staff to help in workflow process improvements. By combining technology and clinical expertise, we bring a unique perspective to help hospitals address their day-to-day challenges in this challenging healthcare environment," says David Gulian, president and CEO of InfoLogix. "Innovative mobile technologies like our HealthTrax solution are a key ingredient in improving hospital operations and decreasing healthcare delivery costs, and we're pleased to have University Health System on our growing list of satisfied customers."
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