CENTERFOLD

John Muir Network Helps Keep Hands Free

The physicians and nurses at the John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek, Calif., have a "high-tech, high-touch" bedside manner. Using a clinical application on a Toshiba pen-based computer, they can talk to a patient, share information and chart progress right at the patient's side. This humanistic approach is one cure to blending

technology with people-a hospital's real bottom line. "We're in the business of taking care of people," states Eric Saff, director of information technology services. "When we worry about our LAN, buy a product or look at a technology, it's from the standpoint that our family is at stake, so we make sure it's reliable. It doesn't help to have high tech if it doesn't meet a patient's need." Xircom's radio frequency solution enables the physician to take a Toshiba "slate" or CliniView PC (CVPC) from a wall and carry it along his or her hospital route, accessing patient data directly. Saff notes, "It's enhanced our LAN because we can deliver data to locations we never have before. In the past, we'd have to write information on a physical chart. Now 10 people simultaneously look a t the same information about a patient."

The John Muir network is a quilt work of the newest switching technology, with Ethernet connections. Distributed over nine locations, 1,100 LAN components serve the hospital and its community outreach programs. The network delivers result information across the enterprise. For example: A remote clinician could place an order on a patient, have a lab test done and receive the lab results remotely. There are up to 85 different applications, serving the basic financial operations of payroll ledger, physician support and accounts payable. The clinical applications include a lab info system, radiology system and a pharmacy system online. Hospital discharge, transfer of patients and order management are other applications. In one obstetrics system, a patient's contractions are monitored by a computer system. That data is fed into a PC and put on CD. Remote doctors can dial in to the CD and see real-time contractions. Many of these apps are stored by Unix minicomputers. "The network can't go down or cause tim e delay," stresses Saff. "This isn't like e-mail goin g down. These are vital signs possibly failing."

Instead of a computer in every room for 325 beds, 200 moving PCs can accomplish five times the amount of work for any division of the center. Soon John Muir's Home Health Care division may access a cellular modem to the LAN while using CVPCs in the home to update patient data.

This not-for-profit community hospital's information technology goal is also to serve its community by putting up a home page soon with patient instructions, public information, and links to Harvard Medical locations and other health care data systems.



February 27, 1996