by
Lisa Chamoff, Contributing Reporter | May 21, 2018
From the May 2018 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
“There's no need for hospitals to buy new bedside monitors for use with the new BeneVision DMS,” added Aquaviva. “We're moving forward, but we're going to take our customers with us.”
Nihon Kohden
At the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society annual meeting in Las Vegas this past March, Nihon Kohden announced its new NK-HiQ Wireless Patient Monitoring System, which uses Wi-Fi for continuous patient monitoring in the hospital setting.
The GZ-120 wearable monitor,
part of Nihon Kohden's new
NK-HiQ Wireless Patient
Monitoring System.
The company had a soft launch of the NK-HiQ system in the past few months at several lead user facilities, with full launch at HIMSS in March.
Traditional telemetry systems run on an RF frequency, said Harsh Dharwad, vice president and chief technology officer
“Hospitals have invested in Wi-Fi,” Dharwad said. “With HiQ they can leverage their existing infrastructure.”
The system is a “good resident of their network,” Dharwad said, and transfers very small amounts of data, so as not to use too much bandwidth. It can also run over a shared service set identifier (SSID) with other medical devices to preserve bandwidth.
The device allows for continuous remote monitoring and data collection even during transport. And if a patient walks into an area of the hospital with no wireless coverage, the NK-HiQ switches from remote to local monitoring and allows for backfill of the data once the patient comes back in the range of the network.
Research shows that patients recover faster if they’re moving, which can add a challenge if they walk to an area that’s not covered, Dharwad said.
“As the patient moves around, now you can actually monitor them remotely while they’re moving, which helps the patient and helps the hospital,” Dharwad said.
Royal Philips
Last year, Royal Philips released its IntelliVue X3 monitor, which allows for continuous monitoring during patient transport. The IntelliVue X3is fully portable and features a smartphone-like user interface with a housing that is built from chemical-resistant materials tested to withstand aggressive disinfectants about 60 times longer than previously used materials, according to the company. It also has a larger display without the company increasing the size of the device, and is more rugged, able to withstand falls from three to four feet high.
