Healthcare Institutions Globally Choose Unify to Connect Patients with Doctors, Nurses, and Facilities to Enable World-Class Healthcare

BOCA RATON, Fla., Nov. 18, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Unify, a leading communications software and services firm, today announced that healthcare institutions around the world are deploying Unify's Unified Communications (UC) solutions to enable world-class healthcare. Part of a trend known as the "Connected Patients" initiative, these healthcare providers and facilities are leveraging the technology to deliver an enhanced patient experience that includes high-quality patient care, team awareness, reduced liability, and lower costs for hospital administrations.

The Connected Patients concept involves modifying Unify's UC solutions specifically for healthcare settings, delivering a seamless user experience that includes voice, audio and video conferencing, online collaboration, messaging, and contact center functionality in one solution. Patient experiences are enhanced through Unify's OpenScape portfolio by enabling patients to more actively engage in their care and follow up. OpenScape facilitates more personalized care based upon customer service principles rather than administrative processes. Providers benefit from optimized and simpler collaboration, as well as more qualitative documentation.

OpenScape turns bedside terminals into a point-of-care workflow solution that integrates the power of UC for both the patient and the caregiver with Electronic Medical Records (EMRs), Electronic Meal Ordering (EMO), and patient education, and infotainment. Flexible alarm and alert solutions respond to an array of automated and manual inputs to notify healthcare staff of schedule interruptions, disasters, major incidents, security notifications, and more. This alarm response system works in conjunction with high-volume dispatch systems to instantly pull together large and diverse on-and-off-network teams, including administrators, clinicians, first responders, and government officials.

"Unify's OpenScape Xpert platform provided Kids Intensive Care and Decision Support's (KIDS) clinical staff with more flexibility in its communications, such as the ability to transfer between calls, to leave and rejoin and allow the KIDS operator to create and deconstruct conferences while still holding individual personnel on the console," said Phil Wilson, KIDS Lead Nurse at Birmingham Children's Hospital.  "With this technology, expert medical staff and other key personnel can maneuver in and out of calls, so that more than one case and complex discussions can take place simultaneously. The touchscreen console is easy to use and the call handling environment is clearly visualized, facilitating conference call management so patient care remains the utmost priority." 

Today, receiving medical attention is notoriously characterized by triage, waiting rooms and insurance red tape. These factors are often symptoms of fragmented IT systems and ineffective communication workflows that prevent healthcare professionals from doing what they do to the best of their abilities. At the same time, hospital administrations are caught between fiscal austerity, skilled caregiver shortages, an increasing patient population, and IT communication systems that can be an expensive source of inefficiency. UC can be a strategy to help hospitals reduce their operating costs.

"Unify offers a New Way to Work for doctors, nurses, technicians, and other caregivers, so they can have more face-time with patients, with fewer obstacles," said Bill Hurley, Chief Marketing Officer of Unify. "Optimized communication technology such as video-enabled web collaboration and conferencing helps team members collaborate quickly. It makes it easy for them to jointly update plan-of-care documents, or dynamically whiteboard complex thoughts. Team members can connect in real-time no matter their location or device." 

Following is a summary of how the healthcare providers and hospital administrators are participating in the Connected Patients initiative. To learn more, read the full case studies on Unify's website.

• ARCUS Clinics Pforzheim are specialists in the treatment of joint diseases and sports injuries who provided greater comfort to patients by deploying an information and entertainment solution from Unify.
• Improved patient service was the main objective in the AZ Damiaan hospital's decision to switch both its outpatient clinic appointment booking service and the Operational Management ICT helpdesk to the Unify OpenScape Contact Center solution.
• OpenScape Voice and UC installed at Bethesda Spital Basel, a member of the Swiss Leading Hospitals, is the foundation of all communications and patient entertainment.
• Birmingham Children's Hospital is home to the largest single Pediatric Intensive Care Unit in the UK and cares for over 1,000 critically ill babies, children and young people every year. The city-center specialist hospital deployed Unify's OpenScape Xpert to streamline clinical decision processes. The team at Birmingham Children's hospital was recognized at the Building Better Healthcare Awards in London.
• After 50 years of history and success, Dr. Christovao da Gama Maternity Hospital's growth had meant poor telephony systems where outages and poor connections were becoming standard, and "no phone service available" was very common on rainy days. A comprehensive UC solution and total infrastructure refresh from Unify brought reduced costs and expanded mobility capabilities.
• OpenScape 4000 with integrated contact center and OpenScape Alarm Response (OScAR) proved to be the ideal system for the Openbaar Psychiatrisch Zorgcentrum Geel to ensure the best possible care for its psychiatric patients.
• Thanks to Unify's OpenScape Contact Center solution, University Hospital Liege (CHU de Liege) has reduced wait times for 80 percent of patient booking calls to less than 30 seconds.
• Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust boosts positive patient outcomes and drives collaboration between staff members through the implementation of the Unify OpenScape platform. By 2015, Unify OpenScape will deliver voice, unified communications and wireless mobility products as well as 6,300 extensions for IP-based SIP telephones for clinical and administrative staff across the Hospital.

To read more about Unify solutions and services for Connected Patients, visit the Unify website.

About Unify
Unify is one of the world's leading communications software and services firms, providing integrated communications solutions for approximately 75 percent of the Fortune Global 500. Our solutions unify multiple networks, devices and applications into one easy-to-use platform that allows teams to engage in rich and meaningful conversations. The result is a transformation of how the enterprise communicates and collaborates that amplifies collective effort, energizes the business, and enhances business performance. Unify has a strong heritage of product reliability, innovation, open standards and security.

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