Capsule Tech announces availability of healthcare's first medical device information system

Capsule Tech, Inc., the leading global provider of medical device integration solutions, recently announced the general availability of SmartLinx, healthcare's first medical device information system (MDIS).

"Healthcare organizations are asking us to provide a wide range of real-time medical device data –physiologic data, therapeutic device settings, and device alarms - to systems beyond the patient record or EMR. To drive clinical and operational improvements, they want to integrate the data we already capture from each connected medical device with additional systems, such as alarms management, patient surveillance, clinical decision support, and asset management," said Kevin Phillips, Capsule Vice President of Marketing and Product Management. "Customers now see the intrinsic value of applying the depth and breadth of the real-time data captured by our products – virtually every data point from every device – to many other areas of their enterprise. The release of SmartLinx provides the platform to respond to all of these trends."

"SmartLinx is a major evolution of Capsule's DataCaptor, healthcare's most widely deployed medical device integration product. This first release delivers major advancements in both our hardware and software solutions that enable healthcare organizations to more effectively harness the power of their medical device data," added Phillips. Among these advancements are the SmartLinx Axon™ family of terminal server products, and the SmartLinx Neuron 2™ mobile clinical computer. Both allow improved wireless security, increased integration options to connect between one and eight devices, and improved remote management capabilities. In addition, the Neuron 2 enables nursing to positively associate medical devices with the proper patient in all deployment scenarios. Additionally, when it is used in lower acuity departments, the Neuron provides a configurable integrated early warning scoring system (EWSS) that immediately calculates a score before the clinician leaves the bedside. This empowers the clinician to identify subtle changes in the patient's state while with the patient and intervene right when it's needed.

More than SmartLinx's accurate capture of data is the significance of enabling clinicians, and clinical engineering and IT to analyze and act appropriately on the data. This will enable healthcare organization to address new use cases that include:

• Alarms & Alerts – Meeting the Joint Commission's recent directives to remedy alarm safety hazards require a system that captures all medical device data, including alarms, for integration into an alarm management system. SmartLinx captures the full range of device data surrounding an alarm in real time enabling a healthcare IT system to interpret the alarm in a clinical context and prioritize clinician alerts—if an alert is, in fact, required.
• Clinical Decision Support – The ability to trend physiologic medical device measurements with the help of early warning algorithms allows early recognition of patient deterioration, reducing adverse events and mortality. SmartLinx makes available highly accurate, high frequency patient, therapeutic, and medical device data at the bedside and, eventually, to clinical decision support system (CDSS) working in concert with a vast knowledge-base of similar prior patient case. This enhances the CDSS's value and helps to avoid medical errors and to advance quality of care.
• Patient Surveillance – Patient surveillance applications can aggregate a wide variety of relevant clinical patient data (e.g. diagnosis, lab notes) along with high frequency medical device information (e.g. waveforms) to support a comprehensive view of the patient in a single on application—typically in any location. SmartLinx makes available real-time device data, so predictive algorithms can better identify data clusters and trends consistent with patient deterioration and specific disease conditions, prompting clinical intervention.
• Asset Tracking and Device Performance – Tracking device usage and location across the enterprise to ensure optimal deployment is crucial to making the most effective use of costly, high-maintenance medical devices so essential to patient care. SmartLinx will provide of timely and appropriate device data to biomedical teams to ensure optimal device management and health, boosting patient safety and care.

SmartLinx has been deployed and is currently being deployed at hospitals across the country.