Healthcare Informatics

Nurse phone electronic checkout When a nurse checks in for her shift, she scans her ID badge at a reader. A computer then programs a cellphone with that nurse's assigned phone number for the duration of her shift. She can then be reached any time. When her shift is done, the nurse turns in the phone to be reprogrammed for the next shift. Patient bar code bracelet for room phones Upon being admitted, each patient is issued a paper ID bracelet with a bar code. When the patient is moved to a different room (for example, pre-op, recovery, ICU, etc.), a nurse scans the bar code and the Internet phone in the room is reprogrammed with the patient's assigned phone number. MONA REEDER/DMN That way, a single phone number follows patients throughout the hospital, so family and friends can always reach them. Eventually, radio frequency identification (RFID) chips – a wireless tracking technology – will be embedded in the bracelets so that sensors in each room detect when a patient enters...

From pacemakers to prosthetic limbs, technology is a routine part of modern medical care. But Nortel Networks is using a prototype medical clinic at its Richardson offices to demonstrate something a little different. Brian Taler, a senior manager with Nortel, says more doctors are embracing the technology found in consumer electronics for treating patients. Nortel features its health care products at a prototype medical clinic in Richardson. Rather than using technology to create new clinical tools, Nortel is using software and hardware to make hospital visits shorter, more productive and less nerve-wracking. A tour of Nortel's new facility is eye-popping both for the ingenuity of the products and the relative simplicity of the underlying technology. Forget 3-D holograms or electronic prescription pads or robot doctors. Instead, Nortel's vision is built on tried-and-true consumer technologies such as Wi-Fi, cellular phones and RFID. Also Online Blog: Technology More personal ...

While healthcare becomes ever more complex, technology is providing answers for some of the most challenging aspects of medicine. eHealth brings you a low down on medical technologies that are changing the way we provide clinical care. Latest medical technologies are transforming health care like never before. Today, owing to the development of high-end equipments and instruments many complex surgical procedures are being performed with minimal incision such as endovascular surgery, interventional radiology or  Laparoscopy. Beneficiaries are the hospitals, as it reduces the load on the hospital resources; and the patients who don't have to stay put in the hospital for weeks.  The modern medical technology is making healthcare effective, speedy and portable. The latest in technology are lab-on-a-chip devices. Though they aren't been used in India at present but for the first time a Bangalore-based firm Bigtec Labs has developed a hand-held device for rapidly detecting Hepatitis ...

How Asia's Healthcare Innovators Boost Efficiency While Cutting Costs Healthcare organizations are feeling the pinch as growing demand and tightening economic constraints force them to become more efficient. Nortel is helping Asia's most forward-looking organizations meet this challenge by leveraging unified communications solutions in innovative ways, as Gerard Anthony, Healthcare Solutions Leader with Nortel Asia , explains.   Hospitals have long dealt with mandates to treat more patients with fewer resources, but the new pressures of the global financial crisis have intensified the pressure they face. Yet in an industry where long-established procedures are often both time-consuming and inefficient, alleviating this pressure can be incredibly difficult. Patients in Singapore, for example, typically wait up to seven hours for discharge checks to be completed, as nurses ring around to confirm final instructions with up to a dozen different healthcare providers and hosp...