Focus

This is just a brief observation …

It seems that there are so many great apps/software/devices coming out in the medical field.

All of them offer some sort of connectivity or paradigm shift in the way things have traditionally been done. The main trend, is that everyone is very focused … they focus on one or two key things and attempt to do those things to the best of their abilities.

While this is great, the biggest challenge moving forward for any large scale hospital IT department is going to be figuring out how all these separate parts can be combined, especially since no one single solution does everything well.

Is it acceptable to have 8 different applications do 8 different things, which leads to 8 different databases storing information on one person?

Is it up to the app/software/device vendors to create an all encompassing solution or is it up to the departments to figure out how these pieces all come together? Perhaps these vendors could agree on standards that should be incorporated into all devices/software/apps that would allow everything to communicate seamlessly …  just thinking out loud.

Medical Software and device connectivity

It is not a new phenomenon that software in the medical device industry lags behind other markets, but as the world becomes more connected and information is becoming increasingly valuable this will have to change.  The sheer amount of data that is produced from medical devices in a clinical setting is phenomenal.   A major problem, that I see,  is the data remains in silos or resident on medical devices with no correlation to patients and outcomes.  The vision of the comprehensive EMR has the promise of gathering this data, but with an ever increasing product and vendor pool the rationalizing and connecting raw physiologic data with a patient file will be problematic for the foreseeable future.

A very positive advancement in the recent months and years is that we are seeing more devices that are “networked,”  this  is the first crucial step towards a pervasive change in the way we look at data.   Examples of this are WIFI enabled Oximeters.  Currently this technology is generally being used for alarm purposes only and not for detailed analysis in case specific, data mining, or neural network type  scenarios.   To make the later scenarios reasonable in a clinical setting the raw data needs to be organized and stored in relationship to the patients master health record.

Once the raw data and patient file reside in a relational database(s) the ability to derive correlations never imagined before are only limited to the completeness of data, strength of algorithms and/or neural network design, and the number of patient records  in the system.

Here at eTrending we are working diligently to gather the raw data, present it in a clinically useful nature, and store/format the raw data for future integration into a more robust patient record system.

What are we trying to accomplish?

Hi everyone,

So what is eTrending and what are we trying to build?

eTrending is an advanced web based graphing tool that can be used to visualize and chart data. Not only that but it can also take that data and produce comprehensive reports all at a touch of a button.

So how is this special?

It’s not really … except for the fact that over here at eTrending we’re working hard at integrating as many devices as possible. Currently we are working towards integrating medical devices … in the future who knows. What we do know is that the tool we have created can take any data and chart it intelligently, allowing for people to review, manipulate, and report on data pulled from a device … that’s pretty special.

Oh and one other thing … our tool is available via the world wide web. What does that mean you may ask? Well … it helps by assuring each user that they are always using THE latest and greatest. If we integrate a new device, there’s no waiting, there’s no downloading an update and running the install file, it’s just there. Available in real time. When we get it so do you.

Where and how do I take advantage of eTrending’s tool?

Currently eTrending is focused on medical device data … currently … There are many possibilities for what this tool can be used for, and if you have ideas, we’d love to hear from you, but as it stands right now eTrending is focused on medical devices. In regards to the “how” you simply have to register for an account, and follow our simple instructions in order to begin uploading data to our servers and start generating reports. As was previously mentioned the tool itself is available via the internet. So what does that mean? That means we host your data, and make it available to you from any computer that is connected to the internet.

Recap

Just to go over everything …

1. etrending is currently designed for use with medical devices. We’ll be posting a list of all the devices, as well as an ongoing list of devices we are trying to intergate.

2. We make all your data available to you through a simple interface, allowing you to manipulate and produce reports through a few simple clicks.