Blog
Voalte Creates Sparks @ HIMSS2009
Posted by: Kenny on April 9, 2009 | 3 comments
After a very exhausting quick two day run through HIMSS2009 in Chicago, my colleague Bill McKenna asked me whether I had any takeaways. If I was true to form, Bill would have gotten a very quick read from me, but as we finished up lunch, I didn’t really have a fast or easy answer. Now riding the plane back to New York, I take a moment to make some commentary. Bill and I had a bit of hit list at HIMSS and we worked to catch up with vendors who work in our areas of focus: voice communications, alarm management, and ...
It’s Not Easy Being a Hospital’s Mobile Device Manager (PDAStreet.com Article)
Posted by: Kenny on December 4, 2008 | 0 comments
Over the last five years, demand for mobile technologies in healthcare has risen exponentially. Unfortunately, additional headcount to keep those devices under control, as well as tools to manage these critical communication devices, has not kept pace. Today's telecommunications managers preside over an extensive investment in mobile devices, including: cell phones, pagers, smartphones, and PDAs, as well as inbuilding voice technologies from Vocera, Ascom, Polycom/Spectralink and Cisco. It's not unsual for even a small community hospitals' mobile assets to represent over $500,000+ of pure capital costs (and that doesn't include software licensing and on-going operational costs aside). In respect to asset management, ...
Redistributing the Wealth: Vocera, Politics, and Giving Badges to the People Who Really Want Them
Posted by: Kenny on May 8, 2008 | 0 comments
Like a lot of things in life, at hospitals, who ends up with what technology is not always fair. More often than not there are those who don’t get what they need, even when others don’t use what they have. Today’s post is the first in a series about two customers who chose to take Vocera away from the “haves,” and give it instead to the “have nots” who really needed it. Here’s the back story: Like many hospitals, one of our long-standing customers deployed Vocera in three separate phases, each time trying to balance the amount of money they had to ...
Look Ma, No Middleware: SIP, Nurse Call and the fight to control staff device assignment
Posted by: Kenny on March 13, 2008 | 5 comments
Despite having successfully worked together for a number of years, a while back Rauland-Borg and Emergin came to an apparent major falling out over how Emergin’s Staff Assignment client app would interact (or replace) Rauland’s Responder NET. As I heard it they actually went down to the wire regarding an announcement regarding tight interoperability, and then the whole thing fell apart--clearly a clash of wills (and strategy) between the leadership of Emergin and Rauland. As a Rauland insider told me a year ago (full disclosure, I worked for Rauland from 1993 through the end of 1999), the new Rauland nursecall platform ...
Nurse Call Integration Assignment Process with Vocera
Posted by: Bill on December 18, 2007 | 0 comments
One of the greatest benefits that is often overlooked in a Vocera implementation is nurse call integration. Allowing patient calls to be directed to the appropriate caregiver (either with or without a unit administrator triaging the call) in real time and then allowing that caregiver to call back to the room to understand what the real need is can be a real time saver. This certainly is better than responding to a generic call and walking to the room, only to learn that the patient's needs are something that can be resolved by perhaps a nurse's aide or tech. A barrier to ...
‘Middleware First’ is not the Best Alternative
Posted by: Bill on October 24, 2007 | 0 comments
Although I have tremendous respect for my colleague Kenny, I cannot totally accept a strategy of looking at band-aiding existing systems to take the place of a Vocera solution. I see two primary reasons. One is another middle-ground alternative. The other is what's being overlooked with an alarm management solution without Vocera. Let me address the middle-ground approach first. I have had the personal experience of a customer who was faced with all the odds against them that Kenny describes: Existing paging infrastructure that needs augmenting (and may not be going to go away anytime soon) Antiquated nursecall system that’s begging to be ...
When the Middleware First Alarm Management Strategy Makes Sense
Posted by: Kenny on October 19, 2007 | 0 comments
A few weeks back a hospital prospect called me in to discuss Vocera, and to meet some of the potential collaborators for a potential VoWiFi project. They'd previously had a very well-received Vocera demo and wanted to make sure that the work that they were doing to build out their wireless infrastructure aligned properly with Vocera's requirements. The customer already has made a significant investment in Cardiopulmonary Corp's Bernoulli patient monitoring technology, and as they look forward they want to make sure that the rich data that is coming from Bernoulli would work in their emerging wireless enterprise, an enterprise that ...
