Humber River Hospital, North America’s first fully digital facility, selects workflow-enhancing communication solutions from Ascom

Humber River Hospital, a new 656-bed acute care facility in Ontario, Canada, officially opened October 18, 2015. The facility, billed as the first fully digital hospital in North America, selected customized communication solutions from Ascom Wireless, including more than 600 Ascom MycoTM purpose-built smartphones for healthcare, combined with the Ascom Unite software platform.

"At Humber River, our technology strategy includes equipping our care team with some of the latest communication tools at the point of care,” said Kevin Fernandes, Chief Technology Officer, Humber River Hospital. "It’s one way we are using technology to advance high quality, safe and efficient patient-centred care. We selected Ascom smart phones not only because of our positive past experience, but because Ascom Myco’s seamless integration with other hospital systems enables us to deliver everything from time-sensitive, bedside nurse calls and notifications to real-time electrocardiograms and waveforms directly to the mobile caregiver device. Ascom Myco increases the time our staff and physicians have to meaningfully interact with patients at the bedside by making communications more efficient and reliable. And crucially, Ascom has a proven track record of delivering its Humber River solutions on time and on budget.”

The Ascom Myco is the world’s first smartphone purpose-built for healthcare environments. Running the Android operating system, the Ascom Myco helps ensure that caregivers have easy, real-time access to clinical information throughout the hospital. When combined with the Ascom Unite platform, the device helps reduce ‘alarm fatigue’, a potentially dangerous phenomenon caused by caregivers’ constant exposure to clinically insignificant alarm notifications. Such overexposure can desensitize caregivers, leading them to not notice, ignore and even deactivate monitors and alarm systems. But by using smart alert filtering and automatic escalation, Ascom solutions help ensure that only significant alerts are distributed to relevant staff.

The Ascom solutions deployed at the new Humber River Hospital also help maximize workflow efficiency. Critical data such as monitor alerts, lab results, alarm notifications, cardiac waveforms, calls and messages are catalogued, organized and directed to pre-assigned caregivers. Escalation through a chain of pre-approved colleagues helps ensure that alerts are received and acted upon. The Ascom Myco even features a built-in barcode scanner that simplifies medication administration. Moreover, because it runs on the Android OS, the Ascom Myco can host a wide range of healthcare applications while ensuring that mission-critical alerts are always prioritized. ‘Sandboxing’ helps to secure patient and clinical data.

"From the beginning, the new Humber River Hospital was envisaged as a lean, green and digital facility,” says Tim Whelehan, President and Chief Executive Officer, Ascom North America. "It’s therefore fitting that Ascom was selected for this forward-looking project, as our solutions are geared towards helping caregivers provide the best-quality, most cost-efficient care possible. Ascom was able to leverage our advanced technology to develop a customized solution that creates more quality time for patient care and safety.”

About Ascom Wireless Solutions

Founded in 1955, Ascom Wireless Solutions, a division of Ascom AG, provides mission critical ICT for global healthcare. Today, more than 100,000 of our systems are installed in hospitals, senior care and independent living facilities and any business areas where mission critical communication is vital. Above all, we are dedicated to making a difference in healthcare.

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