NewYork-Presbyterian Increases Clinician Efficiency
NewYork‐Presbyterian Hospital is one of the most comprehensive university hospitals in the world, with leading specialists in every field of medicine. It includes two renowned medical schools, Columbia University Medical Center and Weill Cornell Medical Center. The health system has approximately 15,000 employees and more than 5,000 staff physicians. Organization
NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital
OBJECTIVE
NewYork‐Presbyterian’s goal was to increase the productivity and efficiency of their clinicians by delivering secure access to patient information wherever and whenever the physician needed. Using tablet PCs, clinicians could use a mobile solution, M3 (Mobile Medical Monitoring), which aggregates all of their medical and personal applications for ease of use. The M3 technology solution provides the clinician with real‐time updates on patients’ conditions through automatically generated summaries and notification alerts throughout the day. The benefit of mobility for clinicians was easy to realize; clinicians could have continuous access to information, regardless of where they were. CHALLENGES
Valerie Punnett, Vice President of IT Core Resources anticipated obstacles she would need to solve when their team began providing M3 loaded tablet PCs to physicians. “We knew that users would lose their wireless connection walking around our facilities,” Punnett explained. “Whenever this happened they would have to log back in to our network and their applications. They would lose time and get frustrated. We knew this would negatively impact user acceptance.” When M3 was rolled out initially, NewYork‐Presbyterian had limited Wi‐Fi coverage. Due to the facility structure, many areas within the hospital either lacked wireless access points or it was too cost‐prohibitive to install. The M3 team looked to cellular data coverage to support the areas where Wi‐Fi didn’t reach. That meant they needed a solution that would seamlessly pass application sessions from one network to the other. If clinicians were forced to manually reconfigure their tablet PCs for either Wi‐Fi or cellular data, user acceptance for the devices would be further diminished. Security was another key issue for Punnett. Like all hospital IT departments, Punnett’s team at NewYork‐Presbyterian needed to ensure patient information was securely encrypted and protected. Under the mandated provisions of the Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act (HIPAA), IT managers must implement security and privacy measures to protect patient data. From Punnett’s perspective, NYP’s IT team needed to implement a security solution that not only protected patient and hospital data traversing the wireless network, but also gave them the ability to quarantine a clinician’s tablet PC if it was lost or stolen. SOLUTION
Peter Haigh, Chair of M3’s Executive Committee discovered the solution for the challenges Punnett faced. “Finding NetMotion Wireless at the Healthcare Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS),” Haigh explains, “was the key to making the M3 equipped tablet PCs work the way we wanted them to. Mobility XE provided anywhere, anytime, anything access. Mobility was able to seamlessly roam between Wi‐Fi and the cellular data network, and the session persistence to avoid re‐login were two capabilities we didn’t know existed. We were really excited and delighted to add Mobility XE to the M3 team.” Industry
Healthcare
Challenges
Clinical applications needed to
persist through lost network access
Application sessions must
seamlessly roam between Wi-Fi and
cellular data networks.
Wireless data needed to be securely
encrypted and protected as
mandated under HIPAA
Clinicians needed simplified access
to their medical and personal
applications without complex device
logins or configurations
Solution
Mobility XE VPN solution
Results
Mobility XE VPN keeps application
sessions alive through wireless
coverage gaps
Application sessions seamlessly
roam between Wi-Fi and cellular
networks without user intervention
Clinical data secure with 128-bit
AES encryption meeting HIPPA
requirements
Clinicians can access their
applications without complex logins
or network configurations
The discovery of NetMotion’s Mobility XE solution enabled the project to move forward with confidence. As Punnett explains, “NetMotion Mobility’s session persistence meant that the M3 user only has to log in once, saving time and making for great user satisfaction.” Whether the user is connecting to an application via Wi‐Fi or a cellular data network, Mobility handles the network connection so the clinician can stay focused on their work. Clinicians at NewYork‐Presbyterian have reported that roaming between networks is practically unnoticeable and that Mobility XE allowed applications to function even in areas of poor coverage. “We were able to get M3s up and running even when we only had limited Wi‐Fi coverage,” explains Punnett. “And thanks to NetMotion’s seamless roaming capability, M3 connects over the cellular data service, when there’s no Wi‐Fi signal. In remote locations the same applies. When at a Wi‐Fi equipped home or remote office, Mobility XE automatically connects the tablet PC to the higher speed network.” Dr. Desmond Jordan, attending physician and inventor of the Patient Health Monitor (PHM) puts it this way “M3, equipped with NetMotion Mobility, enables us to make literally ‘life saving’ interventions by having anytime, anywhere access to the PHM and other applications. We’re finding that M3 enables immensely valuable coordination and interaction between clinicians who are geographically separated. Even more important, M3 allows clinicians to interact with patient data wherever and whenever they are prepared for decision‐making about the patient. This can be at the point‐of‐care, but it doesn’t have to be.” Mobility XE’s VPN capabilities also added another layer to NewYork‐Presbyterian’s security measures. Mobility ensures that all data transmitted between the tablet PCs and the Mobility server (behind the hospital’s firewall) have ironclad 128‐bit AES encryption. Lastly, Punnett’s team knows that if a tablet PC should be lost or stolen, they can quickly lock down the device and keep it quarantined from the hospital network via Mobility’s management console. David Liss, Vice President of Government Relations and Strategic Initiatives, summarizes the benefits already evident from the M3 trial; “We’re seeing dramatic improvements in reduced post‐surgical wound infections, decreased incidence of morbidity and adherence to glucose protocols. But perhaps the best measure of M3’s success is how more clinicians who see it are clamoring to be added to the trial. We’ve presented M3 to various government leaders and committees who are astounded by what we have been able to achieve.” NEXT STEPS
The M3 trial, powered by NetMotion Mobility, is getting ready for a third phase; expanding the number of users to about 75, and measuring the value in terms of “healthcare economics.” If these results come in as expected, tablet PCs equipped with M3 and Mobility XE will be widely deployed. “This is the kind of revolution in healthcare delivery and diagnosis,” indicates Haigh, “that original conceivers of the M3 solution had in mind from the beginning. There’s no doubt that M3 would not be where it is today, without support from NetMotion Wireless and Mobility XE.” Some M3 users have already been experimenting with the use of videoconferencing as a means of improving communication and care coordination. In Phase 3 this capability will be added to every M3. “The Mobile Medical Monitor solution,” concludes Haigh, “has shown how the power of ‘mobility’ can be harnessed. What makes this possible is NetMotion’s Mobility XE software. Mobility XE has proved to be a vital component acting as the fulcrum in maintaining the wireless connection, and giving clinicians access to their applications.” “M3, equipped with NetMotion
Mobility, enables us to make
literally ‘life saving’
interventions…”
Dr. Desmond Jordan,
Physician,
NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital