MDii’s proven processes integrate medical devices into hospitals’ EHR faster, with fewer frustrations, for better value and ROI.
Integrating a diverse inventory of medical device makes and models with an electronic health record (EHR) requires surgical precision; it can cause headaches, frustration, and additional time and expense for even the best-prepared healthcare providers. Some organizations may hesitate to pursue full medical device integration (MDI), concerned about potential operational problems that can cripple return on investment. This is where MDii helps.
MDii empowers hospitals to cost-effectively achieve MDI and seamlessly populate patient records with the right data, for the right patient, at the right time. MDii’s proven processes – developed from extensive operational, clinical, and technical experience within real-world environments – shorten the path to MDI, save hospitals time, and reduce errors and cost.
What is Medical Device Integration (MDI)?
MDI connects patient data generated from medical devices during their care, with patient’s EHR record – automatically.
Medical devices generate extensive clinical healthcare data. Devices in continuous use, like physiologic monitors, ventilators, and anesthesia machines, can generate hundreds of data points per minute. Without medical device integration, this data is trapped in the device and requires manual data entry to capture it in the EHR and gain the associated patient care benefits. By diligently connecting medical device data to the patient’s electronic health record, hospitals improve the reliability of capturing the right data as soon as it is available, including:
- Right value
- Right unit
- Right measure
- Right timestamp
- Right patient
What makes MDI worthwhile?
Medical device integration (MDI) with electronic health records (EHR) improves accuracy, efficiency, clinician satisfaction, potentially even reimbursement rates.
Reduce clinician workload
Off-loading manual data entry reduces clinician interruptions and allows them to better focus on patient care. MDI simultaneously reduces clinician workload and improves data quality, increasing overall clinician satisfaction.
|
Care Area
|
Documentation intervals |
Documentation Intervals / Hr |
Estimated Daily Documentation Minutes Saved @ device |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
MIN |
MAX |
|||
|
OR |
@3-5min |
12-20 |
45 |
150 |
|
PACU |
@15-30min |
2-4 |
9 |
36 |
|
ICU, ED |
@60min |
1 |
9 |
18 |
(See Payout calculations below for estimate details.)
Improve care with better data
Improved data quality – current, free of manual data entry errors, covering greater breadth and depth – can help shorten patient stays, improve patient outcomes, and enable predictive analytics. And, automating medical device communications enables standardization, improving consistency of data quality across sites.
Reduce cost of EHR ownership
Manually entering patient data is time consuming, and the costs in clinicians’ time adds up. In our experience, MDI implementations costs (including internal and external resources) pay out quickly in clinician time savings, with annual ROI’s starting at 49% in PACU, 68% in the ICU and ED, 98% in the OR. We have seen firsthand that MDI improves patient care while reducing overall total cost of ownership.
Estimated days to payout and ROI¹:
|
Care Area |
MDI Implementation Cost @ device |
Documentation intervals |
Estimated Daily Cost Savings @ device |
Days to Payout MDI Implementation cost @ device |
Est ROI (Annual) |
|||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
MIN |
MAX |
MIN |
MAX |
MIN |
MAX |
|||
|
OR |
$ 15,000 |
@3-5min |
$56 |
$188 |
80 |
267 |
98% |
325% |
|
PACU |
$6,000 |
@15-30min |
$23 |
$90 |
133 |
533 |
49% |
195% |
|
ICU, ED |
$6,000 |
@60min |
$11 |
$23 |
267 |
533 |
68% |
137% |
¹ – Based on experience at multiple healthcare delivery organizations integrating over 5,000 medical devices, we calculate potential cost savings per device in reduced documentation time for each care area using the assumptions:
- Documentation staff cost: $75/hr (Comp)
- Time saved manually documenting each interval: 30-60 seconds (Time, in hours)
- Utilization of care area, hours per day, are: OR = 10 hours (M-F), PACU = 12 hours (M-F), ICU, ED = 24x7x365 (Util)
- Active use rate of each device during daily care is 75% (Actv)
Using the documentation intervals above and these assumptions (your organization’s actual values may differ), we estimate daily cost savings (min and max) for each medical device in use as follows:
Savings = (Intervals/Hr) * (Comp) * (Time) * (Util) * (Actv)
We calculate payout by dividing integration cost, per device, by daily Savings.
MDI Implementation Costs used above are conservative (i.e. the facility lacks major infrastructure) therefore requires significant investment, include adding network connectivity from the device to the data closet (e.g., data drop, cabling), licenses for connectivity software / middleware, additional devices required for connectivity (if any), 60/40 mix of internal ($75/hr) and external consulting hours.
Not included in these costs are the medical devices themselves (assumes they are owned but not integrated with the EHR), and hospital’s centralized data center IT infrastructure (servers, storage, network routers/switches, and network connectivity from the data closet to the data center).
Hospitals with some, or much, of the needed infrastructure in place already would have lower upfront costs and a shorter ROI.
What is informatics?
At MDii, we think of of informatics – the 2nd “i” in MDii – as the analysis of biological data so useful insight can result, that enables predictive analytics, machine learning, and clinical decision support. MDii applies informatics to take advantage of emerging technologies, strategically implement MDI projects, and enable future innovation.
Why MDii?
Our team has integrated thousands of medical devices with EHRs for organizations, ranging in size from small community hospitals to large academic medical centers. Seamlessly integrating patient data with EHR is challenging. Doing it right the first time requires extensive testing by expensive resources – and some trial and error – for each unique combination of device, EHR, and other technologies involved. For over 20 years, our solutions work across multiple device manufacturers and middleware systems.
Proven processes
Integrating medical devices with EHR requires a multidisciplinary effort across all stakeholder functions. Our replicable processes and best practices have been tested and verified in high-stress, real-world conditions and have successfully reduced time and costs associated with MDI initiatives – doing it right the first time.
Deep domain expertise
We have deep experience and understanding of how medical device integration technologies are used in real-world patient care settings. For hospitals inclined towards DIY, our proven processes will save you time and money. For hospitals seeking comprehensive hands-on guidance, we tailor professional services that include leading technical expertise, expert project management and delivery, and consulting to senior leadership, project team, and in-between to assure success from project funding and formation through post-production support.