This post is brought to you by a partnership with Ascom Americas.
Patient safety is a top priority for today’s healthcare facilities. Healthcare IT leaders play an impressive and important role in helping to develop solutions that both improve patient outcomes and prioritize patient safety.
Beaumont Health, Michigan’s largest health system, worked with Ascom, GE Healthcare, and other technology innovators to build and expand the country’s first world-class Central Telemetry Monitoring Unit (CTMU). This unique facility enables up to 23 remote tele-techs to provide additional monitoring for patients and help in prioritizing nurse responses.
Digital Sidekicks for Nurses
When you’re caring for critically ill patients, any additional help is welcome. The CTMU program gives the nurses at Beaumont their own digital sidekick — keeping an eye on alarms and alerts to reduce the number of interruptions they receive while performing care.
Preventing Interruptions and Reducing Alarm Fatigue
Unnecessary interruptions result in lost time with patients and clinical errors. We all know how big a problem alarm fatigue is. Wouldn’t it be awesome if you had someone helping you separate actual patient issues from non-critical or mistaken alerts?
The Women in Healthcare Informatics Who Make It Possible
Two key leaders driving the CTMU program and other industry-leading healthcare IT projects are participating in a panel at the annual Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HiMSS) conference. After this panel, they want to hear directly from you and other nurses on the frontlines of healthcare! Ascom Americas will host them at their booth to answer some of your most pressing questions about the intersection of nursing and technology.
Who Are These Experts?
Monique Brand serves as the Director of the Centralized Telemetry Monitoring Unit (CTMU) for Beaumont Health. She is responsible for clinical and daily operations of the CTMU for all eight Beaumont campuses, including 24/7 operations, recruitment and education of technicians and managers, development of protocols, policies and procedures, management of hundreds of full-time staff, process improvements for all sites, and financial oversight.
Lee Puay Chuan is Director of Strategic Projects at Sengkang General Hospital in Singapore (SKH), responsible for chartering new initiatives under SKH Master System Integration directives and implementing campus-wide technology-driven innovation projects. Within the healthcare sector, Ms. Lee has served in the Ministry of Health (MOH) Singapore and MOH Holdings Pte Ltd, leading both national and ministry IT initiatives. Prior to her current role, she served on the core team of Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), pioneering work on Smart Nation and Jurong Lakeside developments.
Time to Ask Your Best Question!
Given the chance, what would you ask the powerhouse female health IT leaders responsible for innovating and building technologies and solutions like the ones mentioned above?
Actually — it’s not even hypothetical. You do have the chance to ask these innovative women a question.
I might ask them:
- Given that there are so few female healthcare IT leaders, what advice would you give aspiring women professionals who wish to rise to leadership positions?
- Monique, how did the nurses react to the patient safety measures you introduced in the Beaumont Health CTMU? What were some of the challenges, and how did you overcome them?
- What healthcare innovation or improvement project are you most proud of?
- What would you say to encourage other women to pursue careers in healthcare informatics?
All you have to do is use your smartphone to record a short video of yourself asking your best question, and submit it by March 2, 2020. If your question is chosen, your video and the panelists’ response will be shared on the Ascom Americas Twitter page and here on the blog.
