Cisco Medical-Grade Network Provides New Clinical Connectivity Solutions

New offerings help improve clinician communications, workflow

SAN JOSE, CA, October 11, 2005 - Cisco Systems, Inc. today broadens the Cisco Medical-Grade Network by enabling clinicians to more efficiently and easily connect with the information, people and equipment they need, when they need it. The new Cisco Clinical Connection Suite consists of four integrated clinical solutions - Nurse Call, Patient Monitoring, Location-Based Services and Collaborative Care - that provide faster, smarter healthcare with the ability to direct, locate and prioritize information for clinicians and their patients. As a result, hospitals realize improved staff productivity, reduced capital and operating costs with extended systems, and significantly enhanced quality of care and services.

“Improving clinical workflow is a major need that has not been adequately addressed by today’s IT solutions,” said Pierre-Paul Allard, vice president of enterprise marketing for Cisco. “Building on the Cisco Medical-Grade Network, the Cisco Clinical Connection Suite is helping hospitals around the world, such as Boston Medical Center and St. Olav’s in Norway, by simplifying and speeding the communications processes. Cisco’s new solution offering improves the way patients are diagnosed, monitored and treated, while also helping these healthcare organizations improve patient care and reduce costs.”
Cisco Clinical Connection Suite: Communicating in the 24/7 Environment

Based on a single, converged Cisco Medical-Grade Network for voice, video and data, the Cisco Clinical Connection Suite provides real-time communications, monitoring, collaboration and resource tracking, delivered as an integrated solution in conjunction with the industry’s leading application and medical device partners.

* Nurse Call: enables real-time alerts, such as patient or caregiver locations, to engage in direct communications with their patients and mobile colleagues. No longer do clinicians have to be contacted on overhead paging systems or dedicated pagers; instead, they can now use wired or wireless devices, including Cisco IP phones, to access Nurse Call Systems such as Rauland-Borg and middleware from Emergin Technologies.

According to Darren Dworkin, CTO of Boston Medical Center, a leading not-for-profit hospital and the primary teaching affiliate for the Boston University School of Medicine, “Replacing our outdated nurse call systems, including the addition of the Cisco Medical-Grade Network and Nurse Call, have helped our clinicians become significantly more productive by giving them real-time communications capabilities, for the very first time. This has had an impact on our patient response times, while also increasing the satisfaction levels of our nursing staff.”

* Patient Monitoring: provides nurses with mobile real-time alerts and patient status by delivering demographic data and key patient information via text and wave form transmission to any wired or wireless IP device. With the realities of healthcare as a wireless profession, caregivers cannot be tethered to nursing stations or remain in the same clinical area for any length of time. Enabled by Cisco communications capabilities connecting patient monitoring devices from leading monitoring device manufacturers, Patient Monitoring enables clinicians to deliver faster customer response.

* Location-Based Services: improves patient care by allowing hospitals to locate and track key assets. Today, valuable time is spent by nurses and clinicians in searching for critical equipment and other hospital resources. By reducing asset tracking time, patients don’t wait unnecessarily for equipment or devices or other hospital resources. Additionally, healthcare facilities prevent equipment loss and replacement costs. Location-Based Services leverages the Cisco Medical-Grade Network and real-time location services for IEEE 802.11 (Wi-Fi) and Radio Frequency Identification Systems (RFID) tracking technology, in conjunction with the Cisco Wireless Location Appliance, asset tracking applications provider PanGo Networks, and active RFID tags from both PanGo Networks and AeroScout.

“Misplaced wheelchairs are a common problem at all hospitals. This problem cost us money because we had to take employees off their normal work duties to track down chairs, and sometimes we had to pay to replace lost chairs. In addition, the patient admissions process was often delayed, leading to patient dissatisfaction,” said Nancy Radcliff, R.N. and director of customer service, patient relations and pastoral care at Bronson Methodist Hospital, a member of Bronson Healthcare Group, a not-for-profit tertiary healthcare system serving southwest Michigan. “With Cisco’s Location-Based Services, no longer did we have to ask three full-time employees to spend several hours a week tracking down wheelchairs. With the system, our staff was freed up to focus on more productive activities, and we could meet the needs of our patients in a more timely fashion. In addition, our patients were more satisfied, as they did not have a long wait while we looked for wheelchairs.”

* Collaborative Care: enables ad hoc collaboration between staff and clinicians to speed the time to diagnosis and treatment, bringing the right caregiver together with patient data in real-time using on-demand audio and videoconferencing capabilities. Using Cisco MeetingPlace and Tandberg’s visual communication technology, Collaborative Care enables hospitals and clinics to provide new services, such as real-time video-based translation capabilities for non-English speaking patients.

The Cisco Clinical Connection Suite is available today worldwide. For more information, please visit www.cisco.com/go/healthcare

About Cisco Systems

Cisco Systems, Inc (NASDAQ:CSCO) the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet, this year celebrates 20 years of commitment to technology innovation, industry leadership and corporate social responsibility. Information on Cisco can be found at http://www.cisco.com. For ongoing news, go to http://newsroom.cisco.com

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