From the May 2015 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine


DiBlasi advises facilities, when purchasing ventilators, to make sure the company provides good technical support and that it is willing to work with clinicians or end users on performance. “Try to select a company you know is willing to work with you,” DiBlasi says. “It’s not simply a point of sale. It’s more, how am I going to develop an ongoing relationship?”

Making a connection
Connectivity is important for all medical devices, and can impact ventilator purchase decisions. Pustavoitau, of Johns Hopkins, says one of the most important questions to ask a vendor is how the ventilator integrates into hospital IT systems, and about the device’s ability to communicate with the facility’s current monitoring systems.
Ventilator manufacturers have been working with hospitals that purchase their products to make sure they interface with EMRs, says Leibold of MD Buyline. Covidien, for example, has an EMR interface solution called the Vital Sync Virtual Patient Monitoring Platform, while CareFusion offers Knowledge Portal, which connects ventilators to hospital IT systems.

“Like everything in a hospital, it has to be connected and it has to be connected seamlessly,” Leibold says. “Between two ventilators, one that works best with their information system is one they choose.”

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