I read with interest "Art Vandelay's" (an anonymous Seinfeld fan and HIStalk contributor) comments regarding Patient Command Centers on HIStalk Update 1/21/08. Here's what the PCC is supposed to do:
It will manage service desks for IT, facilities, clinical engineering, and equipment, as well as clinical alerts and data from medical devices and the computerized patient record for singular issues and trended problems.
Wow! That's a tall order. Even with advanced tracking systems and AI software trying to make sense of all the activity (events), it seems to me that all these management tasks would require intensive human interaction.
"Art" also raised a question regarding device communications:
SNMP isn’t that complex. What are the chances of getting the medical device vendors to add this to their devices?
IMHO, probably not real good. SNMP was primarily used for the management of network devices (routers, hubs, etc.) and protocols. On the surface, its ability to manage large numbers of enterprise networked devices seems like it would be a good fit for hospitals. Unfortunately, the development and adoption of a unique object identifier (OID) for each medical device seems unlikely. Also, a new OID would require the SNMP manager software to be updated in order to recognize it and properly handle the new data.
As medical devices have become networked, the trend has been to embed an HTTP (Web) server in them. This allows secure remote access and control via any Web browser. Many other commercial networked devices have also taken this route.
Even with my pessimistic view on a couple of the details, I don't think the vision for a PCC is any worse off than it was before. The concept of a PCC is broad and ambitious. As such, its value to an institution and implementation details need to be continually explored and refined.
