At the 2008 HIMSS conference in Orlando, Fla., Cerner unveiled its Smart Room powered by CareAware, which integrates technology at the bedside of the patient.

Cerner said its Smart Room incorporates technology and workflow software to improve consumer care and clinician efficiency. The technologies include: two-way communication devices; high resolution audio-video technology; radio frequency identification capability; and integration with the patient record.

“The two concepts of behind our Smart Rooms is to first, make sure we have all of the relevant information in the EMR, and two, make sure the information in the EMR in positioned to encourage a better patient-family-clinician experience,” Allen Latham, national sales director at Cerner, told Health Imaging News.

“Our first way to approach these concepts is around devices and device connectivity. For instance, Smart monitor devices can grab lots of information that can be held on a monitor, and knows how to interface that information with EMR. We also believe these devices ought to be plug-and-play,” Latham said.

Latham noted that these concepts were also implicit in the design of their CareAware architecture, which powers the Smart Room. “CareAware acts as a message bus that takes the information from the various devices, aggregates it, and then sends it out to the EMR. The architecture that Cerner has developed sits outside of Cerner Millennium, so it could run with any application and any vendor,” he added.

The Kansas City, Mo.-company said its Smart Room leverages Cerner Millennium solutions to create the next generation of inpatient and outpatient rooms. The objective of the Smart Room is to create an environment that: connects medical devices to the EMR; allows caregivers to view clinical data from the EMR and medical devices; and connects patients to their personal health record (PHR).

The company said its Smart Room can include:

• CareAware iAware, which aggregates information from multiple sources (the EMR, medical devices and patient’s physical environment), and displays selected information on a computer or plasma screen to the appropriate clinician in a personalized view to allow hands-free activation, so clinicians can view patient information.
• CareAware myStation, which is a high-resolution video and audio system that enhances the patient experience with communication, education and entertainment     for inpatients.
• INet Virtual, which creates remote ICU access using video/audio conferencing technology so critical-care clinicians are able to monitor multiple patients from various hospitals. The two-way communication into each patient’s room provides the remote site with immediate access to the patient record.
• iLocate, which is a location-based tracking solution that uses RFID and IR technology to track and identify the real-time location of patients, hospital staff, clinicians, supplies and equipment.
• iConnect, which enables instant wireless voice communications that users control with naturally spoken commands.
• Motion C5 Mobile Clinical Assistant, which gives nurses and physicians access to patient information at the point of decision.
• PowerChart Local Access, which provides secure access to clinical data including results, allergies, vitals, I&Os, reports, medications and active orders when the system or network is unavailable.
• Single Sign-On, which streamlines the log-in process for clinicians, which allows secure desktop interoperability to Cerner Millennium solutions.
• The RxStation, which is a pharmaceutical management system, composed of devices and workflow solutions.

Cerner said it created the CareAware architecture to bridge the gap between medical devices and patient information. The CareAware connectivity architecture allows healthcare organizations to integrate bi-directional communication of information between medical devices with the EMR, in order to create a single source of truth within the medical record, according to the company.