BARRINGTON, Ill. -- GE Healthcare has announced that Fairview Hospital, a Cleveland Clinic Health System partner and one of the nation's Top 100 Hospitals(r)*[1] , will be the first healthcare organization to implement GE Centricity(r)Perinatal with AirStrip OB, an exclusive state-of-the-art technology by MP4 Solutions that allows obstetricians to use their PDAs (personal digital assistants) or Smart Phones to remotely access fetal heart tracings, maternal contraction patterns, and other critical, virtual real-time data from labor & delivery units. Electronic fetal heart rate monitoring is used to assess fetal well-being during labor and can help improve diagnostic accuracy of fetal compromise.

"At Fairview Hospital our physicians are dedicated to providing comprehensive and superior service for all types of pregnancies from the normal to the most complex," said Jeff Leimgruber, chief administrative officer from Fairview Hospital. "The ability to monitor expectant mothers in the labor and delivery unit remotely means additional peace of mind for our patients during their birthing experience."

Beginning in the early stages of the perinatal continuum, clinicians at Fairview Hospital will utilize GE's Centricity Perinatal Clinical Information System to document and access information about the mother and infant throughout the pregnancy. Working in conjunction with Centricity Perinatal, AirStrip OB(r), offered through GE's exclusive partnership with MP4 Solutions (MP4), then delivers the current and historical patient data, including the fetal strip and maternal contraction pattern, exams, vital signs, and patient census lists from Centricity Perinatal into a PDA via a cellphone connection to enable remote access for the clinician.

"Until now if one of our patients went into pre-term labor we would need to page their physician and relay information about patient progress via the phone while waiting for the physician to arrive, said Jules Moodley, M.D., chairman of Obstetrics at Fairview Hospital. "Today physicians can access critical patient information directly from their cellphones or PDAs whether they're checking in on a patient while rounding at another hospital, scrubbing in at the surgery center or simply 'on call.""

"We're excited that a leading organization like Fairview Hospital realizes the benefits of combining GE's Centricity Perinatal with the AirStrip OB offering," said Dave Henriksen, vice president and general manager for GE Healthcare Integrated IT Solutions. "Together GE and Fairview Hospital will raise the bar for the level of care that patients expect and deserve."

1(current)

2

3

More Industry Headlines