Philips Emergin Launches New Integration to iPhones, Enhancing Flexibility for Alert Notifications to Caregivers

BOCA RATON, Fla., Feb. 23, 2010 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Emergin, a Philips Healthcare company, announced today the availability of an interface between the Emergin alert management platform and the Voalte communication server to deliver alert message notifications from Emergin to the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch devices. This integration facilitates the orchestration of voice, alert, and text communications by leveraging the flexibility of the Apple platform.    

Voalte One is a unified communications solution enabling phone calls across the hospital VoIP system, text messaging via the user directory and user-friendly alert management through Emergin's interface adapter. Through this interface, caregivers can receive and respond to alert messages dispatched by Emergin from an increasing array of input data systems and devices within the hospital.  

Two-way output integrations with the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch have been implemented at Sarasota Memorial Hospital in Sarasota, FL and Huntington Hospital in Pasadena, CA respectively. 

"Traditional communication methods, such as pagers, were not working for the hospital's caregivers," said Ron Rutherford, RN, director of informatics at Huntington Hospital. "We were in need of greater flexibility for accessing important information."

"We were using antiquated pagers to receive alerts from our Philips patient monitors," said Eunie Lee, RN at Huntington Hospital. "The pagers were slow and information was difficult to understand. Now we have clear, up-to-date notifications right at our fingertips."

After an onsite workflow analysis, Voalte worked with Huntington Hospital and Emergin to design an implementation plan to facilitate more effective communication among nurses and other caregivers. The initial implementation phase focused on replacing the pager with the iPod Touch which was then integrated to Philips monitoring through an Emergin Patient Monitoring Gateway. Low and high priority ringtones were assigned to yellow and red alerts to automatically notify caregivers to the level of importance for the message.

The Emergin/Voalte solution then enabled "quick messaging" on the iPod Touch to facilitate real-time communication between caregivers. "The text messaging feature enables me to better prioritize my tasks and communicate more efficiently with my coworkers," added Lee.

The results from implementation of the Emergin/Voalte solution at Huntington Hospital show a dramatic reduction in the number of phone calls made per shift and improved Press Ganey scores for the unit in the two categories, "noise in and around the room" and "response time to call bell."

At Sarasota Memorial Hospital, hospital rooms and halls are a lot quieter as a result of the Emergin/Voalte integration with iPhones, which has significantly reduced overhead paging. After Sarasota's implementation of the Emergin/Voalte solution, overhead paging frequency was reduced by 78%.

Following the success of the Emergin/Voalte integration at Sarasota Memorial Hospital, Huntington Hospital has initiated a project to replace legacy phones with iPhones and extend the Emergin/Voalte solution to the hospital's in-house phone system. Huntington clinical staff will have voice, alert and text communications on one device. Phone numbers will automatically link to user names and each user will retain the same extension, regardless of device, further optimizing communications.

The Emergin alert management solution integrates to a broad suite of input medical devices, nurse call systems, and output communication devices.

About Royal Philips Electronics

Royal Philips Electronics of the Netherlands (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHI) is a diversified Health and Well-being company, focused on improving people's lives through timely innovations. As a world leader in healthcare, lifestyle and lighting, Philips integrates technologies and design into people-centric solutions, based on fundamental customer insights and the brand promise of "sense and simplicity". Headquartered in the Netherlands, Philips employs approximately 116,000 employees in more than 60 countries worldwide. With sales of US $32.3 billion in 2009, the company is a market leader in cardiac care, acute care and home healthcare, energy efficient lighting solutions and new lighting applications, as well as lifestyle products for personal well-being and pleasure with strong leadership positions in flat TV, male shaving and grooming, portable entertainment and oral healthcare. News from Philips is located at www.philips.com/newscenter.

About Voalte®

Voalte® provides compelling software solutions for healthcare institutions that solve communication problems at the point-of-care. Voalte® products are designed to be intuitive, high value, mission critical applications running on the latest generation of touch-based smartphones.  For more information, visit www.Voalte.com or call 941.312.2830.

SOURCE Emergin