Health Care

10 Great Ways to Get Into Health Care; With Stimulus money in the pipeline, Now's the time to sell high-tech improvements into hospitals, clinics and doctors' offices

Jennifer Bosavage

1 September 2009

Health care is a hot market right now, as vendors crank out products at a, ahem, fever pitch, to play in the space. As part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, nearly $1.2 billion will be available to help the nation's hospitals, physicians and other health-care professionals purchase and use electronic health records (EHRs) and improve efficiencies across the board. Following are 10 examples of services and products that system builders can bundle with or incorporate into their offerings—or take inspiration from to create something unique.

1. Archiving: Data-intensive image archiving, administration systems and computer-based patient records have increased the need for more data storage and recovery. The Compellent Storage Center is one solution designed for those challenges. Storage Center is an enterprise-class SAN that significantly lowers capital expenditures, reduces storage management and administration time, provides continuous data availability and enables storage virtualization. Its persistent hardware architecture and sophisticated software applications manage data at the block level, maximizing utilization, automating tiered storage, simplifying replication and speeding data recovery. The solution has been implemented at New Jersey's Princeton Radiology to improve the speed, safety and accuracy of patient care. Compellent's next-generation SAN storage architecture provides fast, integrated and secure access to medical and administrative information.
2. Provide backup power: Health-care offices need to ensure they will not lose patient information due to power outages caused by blackouts, storms or even accidents. The Liebert GXT2 has a low cost of ownership, high capacity and small size. The product is used in doctors' offices that support the Hartford Hospital medical system.
3. Solve problems remotely: Remote PC management capabilities can help lower IT costs while providing a stable, up-to-date environment for delivering patient care. Advocate Health Care used Intel vPro and Intel Centrino with vPro technology to identify, diagnose and repair hardware and software problems remotely, minimizing downtime and allowing doctors and staff to focus on patient care. Intel Active Management Technology includes persistent nonvolatile memory and a hardware-based communication channel that lets administrators collect information and provide service, even if the computer is shut down or the OS is not functioning.
4. Offer remote access solutions: Many health-care facilities have “spokes” that need to report into the main hub. In addition, more hospitals and medical offices are adopting VPN solutions to facilitate staffers who want to securely work while away from the office. NCP's universal IPsec clients (NCP Secure Entry Clients) is one example of how to provide users with powerful encryption and a stable IPsec tunnel to comply with HIPAA regulations regarding off-network handling of patient names, conditions and other personal data. They can be used in connection with IPsec gateways from third-party manufacturers—as an alternative to their VPN clients—to take advantage of their security and telecommunications performance features. Texas-based Hill Country Memorial Hospital and Mass General Hospital are among those that have adopted the technology.
5. Implement data capture: Anoto penDocuments lets paper work seamlessly with any EMR or practice management system, and can act as an entry-level electronic medical record. The product lets users digitally capture handwriting and signatures into computer systems without scanning, faxing or data entry. Emergency rooms at hospitals in Bethesda and Cumberland, Md., implemented a digital pen and paper system powered by Anoto in three days, and they can now fill out printed ER patient charts with the pen, upload the patient data into their systems immediately afterward and automatically verify that there is no missing information for coding or billing.
6. Locate wireless problems: NetScout and Cisco have partnered, integrating the NetScout Sniffer Global analyzer and Cisco 3300 Series Mobility Services Engine (MSE). The Cisco technology provides the actual location of wireless devices at any time on the wireless network, and feeds this information to NetScout's Sniffer Global analyzer, which inspects the packets of information traveling the wireless networks and isolates software application problems, down to the actual wireless device—regardless of where it is. The combination provides faster time-to-knowledge during problem-diagnosis, improving workflow and speeding problem resolution. Both technologies have been in use at Denver Health in Colorado, and the health provider said the integrated product has the potential to enhance service-assurance capabilities for critical wireless applications.
7. Pinpoint unauthorized changes to a network: As health-care networks balloon in size, supporting myriad mission-critical medical systems, the prospect of a hack looms in the back of every hospital IT manager's mind. Netcordia's NetMRI helps IT staff automate the assessment of the configurations of individual network devices, something Florida's Health First had been doing manually. With NetMRI, Health First automates the process of evaluating devices for configuration consistency. Network engineers begin their day by looking at the network scorecard in NetMRI, which provides a high-level view of overall network performance. They can then drill down for more detail on any issues.
8. Provide backup: Selling a remote backup product to health-care customers that is automated, transparent to the users and does not require changing tapes is a winning solution. One such device is the 3X Systems appliance, which can be placed on-site for the initial back up and then moved to the reseller's premises for off-site remote backup. The appliance can be moved while allowing devices to connect to it at the new location (without any end-user intervention). It provides silent backups on servers, desktops and laptops and uses local deduplication for lowered bandwidth requirements and enables user/group-specific backup policies to be centrally created and enforced.
9. Offer asset tracking via Wi-Fi: Hospital IT departments are now applying RFID to a range of uses, such as tracking critical equipment or people, or monitoring environmental conditions (temperature or humidity level, for example). Health-care providers can leverage Wi-Fi solutions to ease deployment and reduce the total cost of ownership of asset tracking. Arizona's University Medical Center (UMC)uses Aeroscout's product to wirelessly track the medical equipment clinicians need.
10. Protect patient information: Part of the stimulus bill includes mandates to protect patient records and information. In particular, even more emphasis will be placed on HIPAA requirements. SpectorSoft's Spector 360 software solution is among those that help protect patient information, detect data loss and increase employee productivity. Spector 360 records Web sites visited, e-mails sent and received, chats and instant messages, keystrokes typed, files transferred, documents printed and applications run. In addition, its unique surveillance-like camera-recording tool details what an employee does every step of the way.