Evaluation Background: Consolidated Health Information Platforms

November 16, 2017 | Evaluations & Guidance

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Here's background for our Evaluations of consolidated health information platforms, outlining the key considerations for making wise purchasing decisions. Learn how the technology is used and what factors we test for, and review our latest product ratings.

The primary purpose of consolidated health information platforms,1which we refer to as CHIPs, is to provide remote access to near-real-time and historical patient information from disparate sources on a single platform to facilitate clinical decisions. These systems are typically not intended to be used as ancillary alarm notification systems for routing medical device alarms to end-user communication devices.

CHIPs do not yet require review and clearance by FDA, since the data presented by these systems is not intended to be used for notifying clinicians of critical changes in patient condition that require an immediate, urgent response, such as active notification of critical alarms or lab results. (However, some systems in this category may have FDA premarket clearance.)

Rather, these technologies are mainly used for remote viewing of patient data and for performing data analytics for alarm management and patient deterioration. Some systems also let users create clinical notes that can be exported back to the electronic health record (EHR). Depending on the hospital's needs, the data aggregated by the system can be used to facilitate a number of use cases, including remotely viewing the vitals and waveforms of multiple patients, reviewing patient information during rounds, viewing the status of perioperative patients and using that data to identify inefficiencies in patient care or hospital workflow, viewing data from the EHR in a single configurable view per clinician needs and identifying trends in patient condition, and providing clinician access to relevant contextual information on a mobile device in the event of a medical device alarm.

To be considered a CHIP, a system must be vendor-agnostic—that is, able to interface with third-party hospital information systems and/or medical devices (such as anesthesia machines, patient monitoring systems, and ventilators)—and must allow clinicians remote access via either a mobile device or desktop computer. The technology is early in the adoption curve...

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