Advancement in clinician efficiency through awareness computing

Abstract

Investment in healthcare information technology (HIT) in the United States has grown drastically in recent years, but despite significant investment, clinician satisfaction with HIT remains low. High risks, conflicting interests, and regulatory hurdles make healthcare a daunting environment in which to introduce change, and benefits from increased spend have yet to be realized. In this paper we present an approach to implementing awareness computing in healthcare, to orchestrate the environment for clinicians and gain computing, power, and workflow efficiencies in many areas. The solution couples a unifying communications protocol with a distributed network of "aware units"-each capable of functioning in disparate systems - all communicating with centralized data gathering and logic processing core. The system is capable of delivering an intelligently orchestrated (i.e., "awareness") computing experience to users, even as they use systems never designed to interoperate. This system is currently in use in hospitals across the US, and advanced features are being tested in hospital pilot projects and in partnerships with academic medical centers.