Healthcare Informatics backgrounder

The increasing amount of data produced by sophisticated imaging machines and monitoring devices represents a major challenge for hospital networks. Combined with the growing use of imaging across the hospital – in radiology, cardiology and critical care – the way this data is distributed and managed is becoming ever more important.

This increased complexity is also an opportunity – by collecting more information about each patient in one place, more informed diagnostic decisions can be made. For example, ProtocolWatch, an application on Philips IntelliVue patient monitors, screens for the signs and symptoms of severe sepsis and issues reminders so that care recommendations are followed, to help hospital staff promptly identify patients at risk of sepsis and initiate treatment if necessary.

Philips’ focus is on the clinical enterprise imaging and information solutions rather than on the hospital information systems. The company seeks to provide solutions that enable clinical excellence in harmony with the hospital’s core information solutions’. Philips Healthcare focuses on three key clinical areas in Healthcare Informatics.

Cardiology

Philips’ Xcelera multimodality image management, analysis and reporting solution organizes and provides access to images and data from key cardiology subspecialties, including echocardiography, cardiovascular ultrasound, nuclear cardiology, cardiac CT, cardiac MR, cardiac catheterization, and electrophysiology, as well as direct links to electrocardiography (ECG) studies.

Xcelera offers an extensive range of integrated, advanced quantification applications on a common patient-centric workspace. The approach delivers clinical insights that help physicians pinpoint health concerns, allowing patients to move through each step of care more efficiently. Patients receiving cardiac care often undergo many clinical tests over a period of time and at different locations in the healthcare system.

The Xcelera solution facilitates the process of documenting the patient’s medical condition, as derived from these clinical tests, into a secure, centralized electronic system. As the patient moves through the care continuum, Xcelera manages and distributes the diverse test results, supporting collaboration among physicians to achieve better clinical outcomes. In addition, referring and on-call physicians can benefit from Philips’ Xcelera

WebForum, which allows access to all relevant information from wherever they are.

Philips Xcelera can utilize Philips iSite PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication System) and other selected radiology PACS systems as a long-term archive, to support sharing of existing enterprise infrastructures and optimize for long-term storage cost.

The company also offers its Xper Information Management solution, which is specifically tailored to the workflow demands of the cath lab environment. Philips’ portfolio also includes an array of services to help healthcare providers monitor cardiology patients at home, after they’ve left the hospital.

Radiology

Philips iSite PACS is an innovative image and information management system that delivers high-quality, high resolution, multi-modality 3D images across the hospital network over existing infrastructure. The solution includes advanced diagnostic viewing stations, on-site and throughout the enterprise, point-of-care access and “always online” long-term storage. Philips’ innovative financial business model enables low up-front capital expenditure and promotes ease-of-growth in a controlled and cost effective fashion.

At the heart of iSite PACS is iSyntax. This technology enables rapid delivery of information to remote networked locations within and beyond the customer’s facility. With iSyntax, diagnostic quality images arrive at the workstation instantaneously.

This advanced technology delivers full-fidelity medical images over existing hospital networks, making large infrastructure upgrades unnecessary. With an installed base of over 450 full scale PACS installations, serving thousands of users, Philips iSite PACS balances the workload across the entire network system, instructing the server to deliver just the required amount of data to utilize the client PC image display. As a result, users can navigate complex multi-megabyte, multi-slice datasets with ease.

The newest versions of Philips iSite PACS features advanced visualization capabilities that are integrated into the PACS workflow and provide additional diagnostic information through clinically relevant visualization anywhere throughout the enterprise. Fully interactive real-time volumetric reading tools (MIP, MPR, 3D) are delivered to the PACS workstation via Philips iSyntax technology, which brings advanced rendering performance and scalability without additional cost and complexities.

iSite PACS also provides all necessary tools required to perform soft-copy screening and reading of mammography exams, including: configurable keyboard shortcuts, keypad support, advanced hanging protocols, hanging protocols sequencing, step zoom tool, magnifying glass, and receipt and display of CAD markers. These mammography enhancements are included in the iSite PACS service delivery model and deployable throughout the enterprise.

Philips XIRIS, (Extended Internet Radiology Information System) is an industry-leading web-based RIS. Scalable from community hospitals to large, multiple-facility hospitals, XIRIS also provides an international and multilingual solution. XIRIS is designed to manage patient registration, scheduling, exam tracking, staff and resource management, and the generation of reports and statistical information, thereby reducing errors and streamlining the workflow at radiology facilities. Where XIRIS concentrates on workflow management at radiology facilities, Philips iSite PACS concentrates on image management and distribution. As such the XIRIS solution is complementary to the Philips iSite PACS offering.

Critical Care

Philips’ clinical information systems help increase critical care quality while boosting operational efficiency. Designed around care providers and the needs of their patients, Philips’ innovative solutions simplify workflow and provide easy access to relevant information for more informed diagnosis and decision-making. From tracking vital patient trends to predicting potential problems to delivering critical alarm and event information across the enterprise, Philips offers complete solutions for every type of hospital.

In a typical critical care environment a patient can be connected to six or more bedside devices – often from a range of vendors, and running varying types of software. Philips IntelliVue Clinical Information Portfolio (ICIP) integrates data from hospital information systems and patient monitors, and is compatible with a wide range of third-party devices, including monitors, ventilators, anaesthesia machines, infusion pumps and pulse oximeters.

The ICIP system is designed to provide real-time decision support at the point of care, allowing clinicians access to clinical data for more confident decisions. The technology centralizes patient data from the bedside and core hospital information systems so clinicians have access, anywhere, to the information they need to make crucial care decisions. From admissions documents to vital signs to labs to consult notes, ICIP Critical Care centralizes and organizes patient information to put the knowledge caregivers need front and centre.

The ICIP suite offers clinical advisory algorithms that may help clinicians avoid common errors and increase compliance with evidence-based care guidelines. Certain signs of sepsis, for example, can trigger an advisory that also references the bundle of interventions recommended by the international Surviving Sepsis campaign.

Recent acquisitions have also strengthened Philips’ Acute Care Clinical IT and Patient Monitoring portfolio, by integrating best-in-class technologies to improve operational efficiencies, staff productivity and decision-making. Emergin’s alarm management and event notification software helps ensure that key information about critical alarms is sent rapidly to the right caregiver at the right time on the right device – be it a pager, wireless telephone, PDA or LED sign.

In addition, the VISICU eICU solution can reduce the interval from the time data is available until the time it is used for decision-making by clinicians. By using patient data, bi-directional video and audio links to remotely monitor critically ill patients in each ICU room, the eICU program has been shown to significantly reduce patient length of stay, medical complications and mortality, while lowering ICU costs.