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Jeffrey Ingle, president of Optimal Solutions, said the bi-directional communications tool helps hospital administrators improve workflow and provide a better patient experience. PHOTO: JOE BOOMGAARD

By Joe Boomgaard | MiBiz
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WYOMING — Imagine if hospitals had a technology that would allow them to not only target various medical education geared to individual patient needs but also coordinate various non-clinical functions.

While it may sound far-fetched, that’s exactly what an increasingly adopted technology developed by Optimal Solutions Inc., a Wyoming-based technology company founded in 1993, helps hospitals near and far accomplish.

The company’s eVideon Healthcare product, which debuted at Metro Health Hospital and most recently was implemented at Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital, can double as an entertainment and educational system that allows clinicians to target disease-specific programming to patients, as well as test their comprehension, said Scott A. King, director of converged technology for eVideon, the company’s interactive patient television division.

eVideon personalizes patients’ in-room experiences. King said the system, which operates through the pillow speaker control, can be used as a simple television controller, as well as to control room temperature, order food, or indicate understanding of an educational video through a series of questions designed to test comprehension — or even to order daily meals from the cafeteria. Various menus can even display information about cafeteria menu options tailored to a diabetic patient’s needs, for example. Because it can then be linked to electronic medical records, the system allows medical staff to focus more on clinical needs rather than other functions.

“What it’s doing is taking a device that’s in every hospital room and is used as a one-way entertainment medium and turning it into a bi-directional communications media,” King told MiBiz.

The system simply connects televisions and the pillow speaker controller to an internal network that can be customized as much or as little as the hospital wants.

The changes to the various customizable menus and options are as simple as using a content management system, King said. And because it allows for two-way communication, eVideon opens the door to many uses, including as a tool for housekeeping to indicate a room is prepared and ready for a new patient or for marketing messages.

Optimal Solutions broke into the healthcare market after working for more than a decade in K-12 and higher education, which used the company’s centralized media management systems. Its technology is used in more than 350 schools in the state of Michigan alone.

“There was an information need showing up in the healthcare marketplace,” King said. “We weren’t the first to market, but we certainly the first to come in with the right technology. And there was a local need. Metro was very forward-thinking in asking why stay with analog media? Why put in coax … when everything else was web-based?”

Jeffrey T. Ingle, president of Optimal Solutions, initially worked with Metro executives to try to identify an existing workable solution, but upon realizing that nothing exactly fit the hospital’s needs, they agreed that it made sense for the company to build it instead. In the system, they found a way to streamline workflow, not make more work for the already overtaxed clinicians, Ingle said.

The list of possibilities for the system just keeps growing. As hospitals see how the technology can be developed and customized, King said they’re also dreaming up new functions. He expects to develop some additional applications that will continue to help managers focus on improving the patient experience. The company could also look to related uses of the system for retirement communities and nursing homes across the country. While eVideon is only marketed in the U.S. through the company’s various appearances at healthcare-related IT shows, King said he’s been getting inquiries from outside health systems as well.

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TAGS:

• evideon
• healthcare
• jeffrey ingle
• optimal solutions
• scott king
• technology
• wyoming