The challenge
Faster response means improved care
Within the healthcare system, communications issues can delay patient care and result in higher costs as well as safety concerns. Nurses and support personnel waste time trying to track down physicians. Specialists are unable to deliver test results to physicians in a timely manner. Beds are taken up by patients who are waiting for discharge orders. The physicians' portal solution from IBM and Avaya integrates real-time, intelligent communications into healthcare applications to speed response time and improve patient care.
The solution
Make more accurate and agile clinical decisions
The physicians' portal solution integrates nearly any vendor's communications infrastructure into clinical support applications. This helps speed clinical decision making and improve outcomes by providing an aggregated view of up-to-date, real-time patient information, including physician contact information, vital statistics, treatments, history and other critical data. The solution can also be configured to send reminders and alerts to caregivers whenever a patient's state changes or when a new patient is incoming.
In addition, the physicians' portal solution provides clinicians, physicians, triage and emergency department staff with next-generation communications capabilities. Hospital staff can use presence awareness and advanced wireless technology to locate and communicate with personnel, such as the primary care provider, specialists, onsite clinicians and emergency responders. This can lead to better patient care. For example:
- When admitting a patient with chest pain, a hospitalist can use the portal to quickly identify the fastest way to communicate with the patient's primary care physician to request a prior EKG and cardiologist notes.
- After documenting a positive finding in a patient's CT scan, a radiologist can use the patient provider list to immediately identify the current attending physician, and use the portal's click-to-call functionality to reach the provider. All the communication is fully auditable so that compliance with patient safety measures can be reported.
- When discharging a patient, a charge nurse can quickly locate the consultants who need to provide the full assessment and treatment plan. Instead of going through the chart and order history, the nurse can use the patient provider list to immediately communicate with the consultant via a text message or instant messaging. This eliminates phone tag and unnecessary waiting that could delay the patient's discharge, affect bed availability and increase length of stay.
The benefits
Lower costs while raising quality of care
By integrating information management and communications services with healthcare solutions, hospitals can improve the quality, accuracy and agility of patient care, while reducing the cost of managing integration with their communications infrastructure. The physicians' portal solution can help:
- Enable real-time clinical alerts using multiple channels to help ensure that clinicians get the information they need, when they need it, sent to the appropriate mobile devices.
- Improve emergency response with built-in location identification from Avaya which alerts emergency room staff of incoming ambulances to help improve patient triage.
- Deliver integrated, accurate patient data that was previously dispersed across the organization, providing medical staff with a complete, up-to-date view of patient profiles.
- Streamline and simplify clinical and business workflows, and connect care providers to the information they need—where, when and how they need it.
- Deliver crucial patient information with speed and efficiency by managing care transitions and information gaps between diverse departments, systems and facilities.
The alliance partnership
Gain a comprehensive, integrated solution
The physicians' portal solution is based on a service-oriented architecture (SOA) approach for hospitals and features the Avaya Agile Communication Environment software, tested and bundled with IBM® System x® server platforms. This combination provides the performance, scalability, high availability and manageability required for mission-critical physician communications. The solution is built on IBM WebSphere® Application Server ND, which offers physicians faster responses from the communications application. The advanced security domains offered by WebSphere Application Server ND are designed to protect patient data and can help reduce hospital liability.
IBM and Avaya have had a strong alliance since 2001.
- IBM and Avaya solutions are used by leaders all over the world to help reduce costs, streamline business processes and enable anytime, anywhere communications.
- Together, IBM and Avaya offer robust and security-rich mission-critical solutions that leverage industry protocols and open standards.
- The Avaya Agile Communication Environment has been validated through the IBM Health Integration Framework validation program, and can be easily incorporated using its open-standards-based platform for healthcare solutions.
We're here to help
Questions? Contact an IBM alliance solutions specialist.