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Addressing a burgeoning market that stands benefit from IT infrastructure, an international communications company headquartered in Toronto is joining a Tarrytown, New York-based distributor of advanced network technology solutions to offer a program that’s expected to help resellers in the healthcare industry.

 

Officials at Nortel (News - Alert) and Westcon Group, Inc., say their so-called “MobilityPoint” program, which includes a series of seminars this month and next throughout the United States, is designed to help resellers grasp the opportunities for VoIP solutions in the healthcare market.

 

Specifically, Nortel’s IP Mobility solution helps physicians work more efficiently and effectively by making patient information available to them at any time. That, in turn, helps physicians make the right decision faster, officials from the companies say.

 

 

What follows are detailed responses from Bryan Bayges, the mobility practice director at Westcon, and Bruce Wallace, Nortel’s leader of healthcare solutions, that uncover the depth and breadth of IP-based mobility solutions for the healthcare industry.

 

Our exchange follows.

 

 

Bruce Wallace, Nortel: There are a number of issues affecting care provided in hospitals, and the “fixed” and “shrinking” payment model forces healthcare providers to ensure they are maximizing their efficiency in the delivery of care – that is, minimize the cost of care.

 

Providing mobility and mobile communications, or “IP Mobility,” to healthcare workers directly addresses key issues in efficiency by, first, allowing healthcare workers to be more efficient. Simply by ensuring the healthcare workers can be easily reached and easily reach others can greatly reduce time wasted by clinical staff looking for data or answers. The result is this capacity is now freed to deliver additional care to patients and nurses can offload non-care related tasks to appropriate supporting teams. By improving efficiency and capacity, hospitals can reduce the allocated costs to care for each patient.

 

It also addresses key issues in efficiency by getting the right information into the hands of clinicians when they are making decisions and providing care reduces the potential for errors and the resulting cost on the system – which is typically not paid for by insurers – to correct injury or illness from errors. Examples include the wrong drug or dosage to the wrong patient or at the wrong time can cause a patient to get sick or worse. The result is a huge drain on healthcare capacity in addition to the human cost. Enabling mobility and getting decision support systems and authentication systems – such as validating a patient or drug prior to delivery – can reduce these errors significantly, which is yet another way to improve efficiency.

 

In summary, mobility does not change the payment model nor the recovery time required by the patient but is does allow hospitals to make significant improvements in their efficiency and reduce unnecessary costs caused by errors. 

 

 

Bryan Bayges, Westcon: As new diagnostic technologies continue to provide larger and more detailed quantities of patient data, and as doctors and their support teams continue to demand immediate mobile access to this information, the proliferation – and business necessity – of healthcare communications solutions will grow exponentially. Establishing a platform for these technologies allows providers to keep pace with evolving operational requirements today, and position themselves for further growth in the years to come.

 

BW: I fully agree with the above point on the demand for baby boomers on healthcare – in our experience at Nortel, this is actually a larger drive in hospitals discharging earlier as a mechanism to deal with demand. A key result is that healthcare providers are looking for solutions that will enable them to get more efficiency from their fixed staff. Trained clinicians are in extreme shortage. We are seeing a significant increase in demand for mobility within healthcare as a way to improve efficiencies. These efficiencies including making it easier to reach and find healthcare workers and to get the information in the hands of the people making the decisions regarding care.

 

 

BB: The healthcare seminar is an event targeted at Westcon’s business partner community that currently is supporting a healthcare provider customer or is looking to develop a healthcare vertical practice within their own organization. Regardless of a healthcare providers geographic location, the individuals in attendance at this seminar can take the business value related information associated to the many different mobility solutions that will be discussed and articulate that business value to their end customer accounts in a way which will help better position wireless technology and mobility applications into a solution that resolves true end customer business and technology needs regardless of size or location.

 

BW: The solutions under discussion at the seminar will provide value equally to healthcare providers anywhere including those across the spectrum of Healthcare providers such as primary care hospitals, long term care, hospice/palliative care and other forms of assisted living. The solutions being presented do not enter the wide area network offers such as those used by home care nursing although these do exist and we (Nortel) could discuss those separately.

 

 

BW: The IP MobilityPoint solution supports a number of fundamental security and design considerations. First, the communications between client devices – through the network and back to applications – in a hospital data center support numerous options for encryption to prevent “eavesdropping” on the wired or wireless network. 

 

Second, the solution supports and enables “thin client” models for clinical information presentation. This implies that devices in users hands are used to present information to clinicians but do not allow the information to be stored on the device. This means that a stolen device does not have private data on it.

 

The IP MobilityPoint solution focuses on delivery of information into the hands of clinicians. Nortel also offers security solutions for data center applications and systems that are used by the healthcare sector.

 

BB: In addition to encryption and authentication, wireless local area networks need to also be protected against rogue access points, insecure configurations, and the many other different types of attacks. Products like Motorola’s AirDefense (News - Alert) could enhance the Nortel solution by providing a final layer of security that provides around-the-clock monitoring of the network.