Austco will use Healthcare Estates 2014 as a platform to show four nurse call add-ons that they claim will leverage greater infrastructure value.
These are:
Application-rich duty stations
Smart devices, similar to a tablet, ‘that can be virtual call points, call list annunciators, or workflow assistants’. The latest version from Austco now has full VoIP (telephony) intercom and dialler capabilities, and can display patient records. One device can be tailored for patients and staff, with ‘simple buttons and bells’ replaced by ‘smarter, application-rich’ panels. Austco says it continues to develop its IP platform ‘in line with present and future needs’.
Location awareness tags
Unobtrusive, and non-intrusive devices that help clinical staff understand the location of people and ‘assets’, so that, for example:
• A mother and baby can be safely re-united.
• Patient calls are routed to the nearest nurse.
• Valuable assets are located quickly and re-used.
• Repeat routines are triggered automatically.
Austco said: “Combining location information with nurse call data, for example, enables more intelligent decisions to be made. Our unified infrastructure can combine location data with care requests and interventions recorded by the nurse call system – to add another layer of traceability that helps care organisations identify trends and issues of accountability.”
Patient engagement systems
With nurse call systems being the consistent components that connect hospital services to patients, it makes sense for this infrastructure, if correctly deployed, to be the building block upon which additional services are delivered. Austco explains: “Integrated in an efficient and productive manner, this enables a greater array of patient services to be provided, and improves the quality of care provided by nursing staff.” Austco’s unified infrastructure could, for instance, be used for nurse call, workflow automation, updating meal and dietary requirements, delivering games and external communication services, and placing orders with the hospital pharmacy – all utilising a common platform.
Wireless call points
Austco argues that both wireless and wired systems ‘have their place in the world of nurse call’. It says: “Cables offer reliability and bandwidth, while wireless systems offer convenience, and sometimes a cost benefit. Although a wireless system can be cheaper to install, it may well not always be cheaper to own. Ideally a hybrid approach would combine the reliability of cabled infrastructure, with the convenience and improved performance of the latest wireless technologies.”
Austco says its new low power wireless call point ‘allows the best of both worlds’, enabling cabled and wireless technologies to be combined. The company explains: “Supporting multiple call points to a single location with very low power demands and increased reliability means cables are not needed within rooms. However, for maximum reliability across the site cables are still deployed.”
