Interview with Todd Dunsirn of True Process
A while back I had the opportunity to chat with Todd Dunsirn, the CEO of True Process. True Process provides products and services to both hospitals and various manufacturers. The company is focused on the point of care market offering a medication administration solution and a medical device data system.
What was the genesis for starting True Process?
I started the company in 2004. I have an engineering background, and had several other companies doing IT consulting and then web development, and application development. Then I had a friend contact me to develop a bar-code point-of-care simulation so that sales reps that ...
Source: Medical Connectivity Consulting - July 14, 2014 Category: Technology Consultants Authors: Tim Gee Tags: Company Profiles BCMA MDDS real time location systems Source Type: blogs
Messaging Middleware Market Segmentation & Adoption
The previous post in this series suggested a set of characteristics to define the messaging middleware market and described the typical product architecture for these systems. In this post, we’ll look at ways the market may be segmented and how the market is adopting these systems.
Market Segmentation
Market segmentation is the dividing of a broader market into subsets of potential buyers who have common market requirements who then become the target for your product, sales and marketing. Using my favorite market adoption model, Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm, this is the bowling alley strategy. Software d...
Source: Medical Connectivity Consulting - July 10, 2014 Category: Technology Consultants Authors: Tim Gee Tags: Business Planning Clinical Alarms Healthcare IT alarm notification Emergin messaging secure-messaging Source Type: blogs
Secure Messaging Middleware Market Defined
What do secure communications, care team coordination, patient engagement various workflow automation solutions and alarm notification have in common? They’re all examples of messaging middleware solutions found in health care. Which begs the question, what the heck is messaging middleware? This label is a term of art that was first coined by Emergin in the early to mid 2000s. As the name of a product category, it’s descriptive of the underlying technical functions of the product, but has nothing to with how the products are actually used – which can vary considerably.
All of this said, the term messagin...
Source: Medical Connectivity Consulting - July 2, 2014 Category: Technology Consultants Authors: Tim Gee Tags: Business Planning Clinical Alarms Patient Flow alarm notification Emergin messaging secure-messaging Source Type: blogs
A Medical Device Recall of an EHR-like Product
The recent recall (links below) for McKesson’s Anesthesia Care system raises interesting questions about potential information system failure modes as well as what system/software functions cross the imaginary line between unregulated EHRs and regulated medical devices.
First the facts. The FDA announced McKesson’s voluntary recall of its Anesthesia Care system in several on-line (here, here and here) postings. This trio of postings is interesting because the first links only to the second, the second does not link to either of the other two. The third also does not link to the other two, and was not part of any of t...
Source: Medical Connectivity Consulting - March 19, 2014 Category: Technology Consultants Authors: William Hyman Tags: Healthcare IT Standards & Regulatory EMR regulation FDA recall Source Type: blogs
HIMSS 2014 in Review
Conclusions
This blog post is part of the #HIMSS14 Blog Carnival #4, Looking Back at HIMSS14. Be sure to check out the carnival to see what other HIMSS14 Social Media Ambassadors though about this year’s event.
Finally, I’d like to thank the folks at HIMSS for having me attend this year’s event as a Social Media Ambassador. I hope people got something from my tweets during the conference, and this wrap-up blog post.
Tim Gee is Principal of Medical Connectivity Consulting. He is a master connectologist, technologist and strategist working for medical device and IT companies ...
Source: Medical Connectivity Consulting - March 4, 2014 Category: Technology Consultants Authors: Tim Gee Tags: Events Source Type: blogs
mHealth – How Much Does it Cost and is it Clinically Effective?
I wrote in the beginning of 2012 that perhaps that year was the year for mHealth to ‘breakout. ‘ I cited several proclamations and organizational activities to support that claim. mHealth and the use of remote monitoring as an integrated healthcare offering is still not as prevalent as one would think it would be two years later. Even in the Telemedicine & E-Health LinkedIn Group, one sees angst at the low adoption rate of the use of telehealth solutions. Inevitably, when I speak with my colleagues and other people involved in healthcare, economic and clinical effectiveness questions prevail. Two specifi...
Source: Medical Connectivity Consulting - February 24, 2014 Category: Technology Consultants Authors: BMoorman Tags: Remote Monitoring Source Type: blogs
Legislation Seeks to Deregulate Medical Software
Introduced in the House back in October was the wittily named Sensible Oversight for Technology which Advances Regulatory Efficiency Act of 2013 which has the acronym SOFTWARE. Not to be outdone on the creation of legislative acronyms, now comes the Senate version with a bill entitled Preventing Regulatory Overreach To Enhance Care Technology, which of course gives us PROTECT. Both of these bills seek to define and sub-define medically related software, and then to take part of what they have defined away from the FDA, and do something else with it that has not yet been clearly identified.
The premise of these bills is t...
Source: Medical Connectivity Consulting - February 17, 2014 Category: Technology Consultants Authors: William Hyman Tags: Standards & Regulatory Source Type: blogs
Defining the Point of Care Market
It’s useful to segment and analyze markets for developing company and product strategy or analyzing competitor’s actions. Such an exercise helps illuminate why companies and markets do what they do – and what they might do in the future. In getting ready for this year’s HIMSS in Orlando, I’ve been thinking about the point of care (PoC) market. At the first Medical Device Connectivity conference in 2009, I defined the PoC market as the workflow and data associated with direct patient care in nursing units, the ED, surgery and related areas. This contrasts with EMRs managing orders, diagnostics,...
Source: Medical Connectivity Consulting - February 10, 2014 Category: Technology Consultants Authors: Tim Gee Tags: Company Profiles Source Type: blogs
Role of Montoring Techs in Alarm Notification
Challenges with alarm notification and fatigue have plagued the health care industry for decades. Long before alarm notification systems like Emergin (now Philips IntelliSpace Event Management) and GlobeStar Systems (ConnexAll) appeared, some hospitals addressed alarm issues with the original alarm notification system, monitoring techs. Monitoring techs remain an accepted and effective tool in the constant battle to reduce alarm fatigue and avoid failure-to-rescue events.
With the growing adoption of electronic alarm notification systems, is there still a role for monitoring techs? Are electronic alarm notification system...
Source: Medical Connectivity Consulting - January 28, 2014 Category: Technology Consultants Authors: Tim Gee Tags: Clinical Alarms Patient Safety Source Type: blogs
Guidelines for Using Wi-Fi for Medical Devices
On a recent LinkedIn group discussion, the following question was posed by Taimoore (Tim) Rajah of the NIH:
We are encountering many hospital which are still based on wired LAN technology for medical device connectivity. Many have mentioned their gripes and major concerns about using Wi-Fi technology for patient monitoring and drug delivery monitoring in the OR as well as ICU departments.
Many hospitals are still using WMTS telemetry in their more critical patient monitoring areas. This is very expensive and maintenance for such a system is costly.
Can you tell us what are the major criteria to ensure a reliable safe and s...
Source: Medical Connectivity Consulting - January 13, 2014 Category: Technology Consultants Authors: Tim Gee Tags: Healthcare IT Wireless Medical Devices Source Type: blogs
Have You Read a Disclaimer Lately?
Some time ago Tim Gee pointed out that a major vendor for an in hospital communication system included the following statement in its documentation:
“This product is not intended for use with patient monitoring devices or other patient care devices. Do not use this product as the primary communications tool in health care environments, as it may use an unregulated frequency band that is susceptible to interference from other devices or equipment.”
Of course “primary communication” was exactly why the product was being purchased, and arguably what it was being sold for.
When discussing Clinical Decis...
Source: Medical Connectivity Consulting - January 7, 2014 Category: Technology Consultants Authors: William Hyman Tags: Healthcare IT Source Type: blogs
Order Workflows
Except for emergent situations, no medical device is used without an order. And if not an order written to accomplish a certain clinical task for a specific patient, then “standing” orders captured in written policies and procedures to handle frequent, routine situations. Consequently, orders are one of the first workflow steps in medical device connectivity. Orders are pervasive, used in all health care delivery environments from acute care hospitals to patient’s homes.
Principal ways connectivity can add value to medical device are enhancing patient safety, improving clinical efficacy and productivity. ...
Source: Medical Connectivity Consulting - January 6, 2014 Category: Technology Consultants Authors: Tim Gee Tags: connectivity Patient Safety Source Type: blogs
Scheduling Workflow
Scheduling is not a workflow one normally associates with medical device connectivity. In some applications, scheduling is handled by software separate from the connectivity solution. Sometimes, scheduling is not done at all. In other applications, as we shall see, scheduling is so much a part of the broader workflow, that it’s hard to recognize as a scheduling task. Two illustrative aspects of scheduling will be discussed, scheduling for diagnostic modalities and scheduling for routine patient care tasks. Because it’s less understood (and frankly more interesting) we will look at scheduling for routine patient...
Source: Medical Connectivity Consulting - December 5, 2013 Category: Technology Consultants Authors: Tim Gee Tags: connectivity Patient Flow Patient Safety Source Type: blogs
Patient Context Workflow
This blog post is intended as a high level review of the issues surrounding the creation and management of patient context for data acquired from medical devices. This post is not a definitive explanation of all factors associated with patient context, nor does it provide “the answer” to any particular patient context need. The intent of this post is to describe different requirements, technologies and workflows that impact the requirements and design of optimal patient context management. The goal here is to flesh out a framework to think about and discuss patient context and how it can impact patient safety a...
Source: Medical Connectivity Consulting - November 11, 2013 Category: Technology Consultants Authors: Tim Gee Tags: connectivity Patient Safety Source Type: blogs
TCBI Medical Device Connectivity Conference 2013
In a few short weeks, TCBI will be holding their 5th annual Medical Device Connectivity Conference in Herndon, VA (the Washington DC metro area), November 21-22. It seems like the first conference was only a year or two ago.
Medical device connectivity, or the more fashionable (and some might say, more descriptive) term interoperability, has both changed significantly and remained the same over these past 5 years. Lots has changed on the regulatory and HIT governance front. The FDA has issued guidance on mobile medical apps, wireless medical devices, and cyber security – just this year. The FDASIA report on regulatin...
Source: Medical Connectivity Consulting - November 7, 2013 Category: Technology Consultants Authors: Tim Gee Tags: Events Source Type: blogs
