CME Insider's Blog Posts

It’s hard to believe that workstations on wheels (WOWs) weren’t in active use in healthcare settings ten years ago. The digitization of medical records, coupled with better wireless capabilities has been a real game changer for health care and WOWs have been a notable part of that change.

While around longer, the same is true of wall arms as their roles have increased to include a way to incorporate various devices within the patient room and around the facility.

Technology is invigorating healthcare with a new efficiency and increasingly new possibilities of how to deliver it. As the uses evolve, how these devices are transported or positioned is evolving too.

The patient room is getting more attention these days, primarily due to the proliferation of Internet enabled technology that brings new opportunities for both patient care and patient engagement. This change also brings new ways of looking at what the patient room needs to provide in this new age of connection.

This shift has huge impact for hospital biomed and IT departments and what is being asked of them. We’ll look at that more closely a bit later. First, let’s get some perspective on what has changed and what it means for patient care.

Demands on today’s hospital IT Department are certainly progressing at a fast pace. Growing EHR presence, Internet enabled devices appearing in locations that didn’t seem possible even 10 years ago, BYOD extending endpoints, and all this overlaid on the long-standing day-to-day healthcare IT needs mean that these departments are pulling at the seams.

Running an efficient hospital IT department is certainly more challenging, however the nature of IT means that technology, along with effective staff management, is creating opportunities for better outcomes.