Health Care IT: Cisco, Palomar Health Collaborate on 'Hospital of the Future' in San Diego

Cisco IP Phones

On Aug. 19, San Diego's Palomar Health opened its 288-bed Palomar Medical Center, featuring several technologies from Cisco Systems. The largest health district in California, Palomar Health serves more than 500,000 residents in the inland north San Diego area. The 288-bed Palomar Medical Center is a 740,000-square-foot facility with 1,700 health care providers and staff. Cisco and Palomar built out a virtual hospital in Second Life starting in 2008 while preparing for the opening of the real-life facility in August. The new hospital will incorporate technology such as voice-over-IP phones instead of pagers, body-worn sensors from Sotera Wireless and telepresence robots from IVCi. In addition, Cisco's Unified Computing Network will provide storage backup and virtualization. A 10-gigabit high-bandwidth network will allow the hospital to provide video, messaging, voice and images all on one network, Orlando Portale, chief innovation officer for Palomar Health, told eWEEK. "Our thinking was this tech infrastructure, networking, communications and collaboration were going to be a key underpinning for what we're doing here going forward," said Portale. Here eWEEK takes a look at the technologies that make up Palomar Health's "hospital of the future."

Cisco IP Phones

With the lack of central nursing stations like in traditional hospitals, nurses rely on Cisco 7925 IP Wireless Phones to keep patients and nurses connected in real time. Patients contact nurses or clinician assistants on the phones if they need water or pain medication or even the bed raised. "They can discuss a particular patient's condition in real time without having to walk back to a nursing station or a meeting room," said Portale. The hospital is able to reduce the amount of overhead from pagers, said Mike Haymaker, Cisco's health care marketing leader for the Americas. Instead of five or six pagers, nurses can use one IP phone, Haymaker told eWEEK. In addition, the phones can be wiped down and survive being dropped, Haymaker said.

Medical Information, Anytime, Anywhere

Palomar's set of applications called Medical Information Anytime Anywhere (MIAA) allow physicians to track patient information and view electrocardiogram wave forms, heart rates and radiology images. It also allows doctors to view electronic health records. Doctors can conference in specialists to discuss patient conditions, according to Palomar.

Sotera Wireless ViSi Mobile

Palomar is employing Sotera Wireless' WiFi-enabled ViSi Mobile, a next-generation body-worn physiological monitoring technology. It replaces the small old-style TV monitors that sit next to the patient, said Portale. Sotera is a startup company funded by Intel and Qualcomm. "We've been working with them on reinventing the way patients are going to be monitored in the future," said Portale. Sotera announced on Aug. 21 that its body-area mapping technology had been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration."It's a little wrist-worn device that collects all the vital signs from sensors on the body and broadcasts the vital signs over the wireless network," said Portale. In addition, ViSi connects to EHRs.

IVCi VGo Robotic Telepresence

IVCi's wireless VGo Remote Telepresence robots allow doctors, nurses and family members to communicate remotely with patients through video conferencing.

Cisco Medical-Grade Network

Cisco considers its tech infrastructure to be the "central nervous system for modern hospitals," according to Cisco. "Through the Cisco Medical Grade Network we feel like we're in a position to build it all together," said Haymaker. The converged network enables secure access to patients' health information from smartphones or tablets in real time.

Cisco TelePresence

Cisco's Medical Grade Network also allows Palomar to use the TelePresence platform for video sessions between doctors and patients. The TelePresence video-collaboration platform integrates with WebEx, Cisco's Web-conferencing software also used at Palomar.

Cisco Unified Computing System

With Palomar located in an area with seismic activity, the Unified Computing System provides some backup as part of the health system's disaster planning, said Haymaker. "Palomar is on kind of a seismic active area," Haymaker noted. "So they wanted to make sure they had redundancy and an active backup plan in case they need to move computing power around."

Cisco Jabber Messaging

A unified communications application, Jabber integrates voice and video, instant messaging, desktop sharing and conferencing. It allows a doctor to communicate on mobile devices such as the iPad with other physicians.

A 10-Gigabit Backbone

Palomar incorporates a 10-gigabit network that can support video, messaging, voice and images all on one network, said Portale. "We can deliver medical images that require pretty high bandwidth," he said. "With this high bandwidth, we can enable that and also do real-time video and support all of these applications on one converged network."

Iris-Scanning Technology

Palomar uses next-generation iris-scanning technology at the registration desk to capture a snapshot of the patient's eyeball, FierceHealthIT reported. The biometric technology uses the imprint of the eyeball's vascular infrastructure to identify a patient.

Source: Eweek