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IBM To Market PatientKeeper's Point-Of-Care Software

Armonk, NY and Boston, MA, July 21, 2003 … IBM and PatientKeeper, Inc. today announced a significant expansion of wireless capabilities to help hospitals enhance patient care, reduce medical errors, and increase the job satisfaction of physicians, nurses, and other healthcare professionals.

As part of their collaborative efforts, IBM will market and resell PatientKeeper's mobile platform and broad portfolio of wireless, point-of-care solutions. Those solutions enable a physician to view the patient's electronic medical record, use powerful clinical decision support tools, accurately record charges for medical treatments, and more -- all with one handheld device while at the patient's bedside.

The expanded collaboration is key to IBM's new Wireless and Mobility Solutions (WAMS) for healthcare professionals and builds upon a relationship with PatientKeeper initiated in May 2001. IBM's WAMS portfolio offers healthcare providers a comprehensive wireless solution that includes hardware, design, and implementation, installation and testing, LAN hosting services, and more. IBM can integrate PatientKeeper solutions with existing hospital information systems and support dozens of different network technologies and wireless standards protocols used worldwide.

"PatientKeeper's vision, track record, and commitment to an open mobile platform for healthcare makes for a perfect fit for IBM in our efforts to transform the nation's healthcare industry," said Russ Ricci, MD and general manager, IBM Global Healthcare Industry. "PatientKeeper strengthens our WAMS portfolio and will allow hospitals, doctors, and patients to enjoy real benefits from wireless and mobile technologies."

As an example, PatientKeeper's Charge Capture Application Suite automates a billing process that in a typical hospital relies on scattered 3x5 note cards, encounter forms, scraps of paper, and human memory. PatientKeeper's mobile alternative will reduce physician and patient frustration due to lost charges, delays, inaccurate bills, data entry errors, denial of claims, and others problem associated with a traditionally manual, paper-based process.

The PatientKeeper mobile platform solution runs on WebSphere,* IBM's family of standards-based infrastructure software that helps customers take applications essential to running their business and extends them via the Web to customers, suppliers, partners and employees.

Studies by the Institute of Medicine have shown that automating paper-based processes, adopting electronic patient medical records and empowering clinicians with wireless technology, can play a significant role in increasing patient safety and the efficiency and job satisfaction of healthcare professionals. Information technology is also considered crucial in helping hold the line on the nation's escalating healthcare costs that now stand at more than $1.4 trillion per year.

"In the near future, a physician will no longer consider seeing patients without a handheld device (PDA) any more than seeing them without a stethoscope," said Dr. Joseph Pisegna, Associate Professor UCLA and Chief of Gastroenterology and Hepatology of the VA (Los Angeles). "Mobile computing will take the guess-work out of medicine, reduce errors, and enable the physician to spend more time interacting with the patient. The collaboration of IBM and PatientKeeper supports the acceleration of mobile computing in creating a standard of care that improves patient safety, saves lives, and improves the work life for physicians, nurses, and other health professionals."

The PatientKeeper Clinical Application Suite gives physicians immediate access to the information needed to evaluate a patient's condition and make informed decisions. The software enables clinicians to see lab results, clinical notes, patient vital statistics, input/output data and alerts along with medication lists, allergies, and clinical reference information.

In addition to PatientKeeper's clinical solutions, IBM's WAMS will show how the Charge Capture Application Suite can deliver a strong enough return on investment to help finance a hospital's entire wireless infrastructure. Hospitals using the PatientKeeper application have seen significant return on investment benefits -- in some instances reaching more than 400 percent over the cost of the software in the first year alone.

"The combination of IBM wireless infrastructure and PatientKeeper mobile solutions offers tremendous synergy for hospitals and healthcare," said Eugene Signorini, senior analyst at The Yankee Group. "By incorporating PatientKeeper's best-of-breed charge capture application, IBM is providing hospitals with an immediate return that can help offset their capital investment."

"PatientKeeper is extremely proud of its long relationship with IBM," said Paul W. Brient, president and CEO of PatientKeeper. "IBM's strength and reputation enables us to greatly extend our market reach. Together, we plan to bring a completely new level of mobile productivity, user satisfaction, and patient safety to doctors and hospitals."

A survey by the Medical Records Institute, a group that promotes electronic healthcare technology revealed that more than three-quarters of respondents said improving workflow, billing, and patient safety are key motivations for adopting electronic patient health records.

About IBM Healthcare

IBM is helping transform the healthcare, life sciences and pharmaceutical industries. IBM offers industry-specific research, consulting, hardware, middleware, integration and implementation services. More than 15,000 IBM professionals serve health-related customers in more than 160 countries. IBM capabilities include research expertise, high performance computing, modeling and data management for genomic studies, the search for new drugs and other life science efforts. Solutions from IBM help healthcare providers and payers increase patient care and safety, reduce medical errors and reduce costs by creating a faster, more efficient Web-based infrastructure. Other key services offered to healthcare customers include business process implementation, systems outsourcing, Web hosting, technology design, and training. To learn more about IBM please visit www.ibm.com

About PatientKeeper

PatientKeeper, Inc. provides doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals with mobile computing solutions to improve patient care and curb rising costs. The PatientKeeper Platform easily integrates with existing hospital IT systems and securely delivers patient information to handheld PDAs. PatientKeeper offers a portfolio of wireless applications for such healthcare tasks as pre-planning for daily rounds, timely delivery of clinical results, and charge capture at the point-of-care. PatientKeeper is the wireless provider for Cerner, and Thomson/ MICROMEDEX, and a number of leading healthcare institutions have standardized on the PatientKeeper Platform. For more information, visit www.patientkeeper.com

 
 
 
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