Hoana Medical Partners With Private Hospitals, Veterans Administration and U.S. Army

HONOLULU— Hoana Medical, Inc. announced today a partnership with a large healthcare system in Pennsylvania, the Veterans Administration (VA) with VA hospitals in Florida and Nebraska, and the U.S. Army to improve patient safety in acute-care hospitals. Hospital experience has shown that rapid response teams (RRT) are not effective if the patient is found too late — many times patients are found deceased, also referred to as a "dead in bed."

Hoana's LifeBed™ Patient Vigilance System identifies patients as they begin to deteriorate and immediately notifies the hospital nursing staff — all invisible to the patient, since there is no physical connection to the patient whatsoever. The LifeBed has experience on more than 15,000 acute-care medical-surgical patients around the country and has shown that errors and accidents don't discriminate between social or economic classes; it can happen to anybody, anywhere. This partnership, referred to as PIMA (for Personal Intelligent Medical Assistant), will examine how finding a patient in distress early reduces the risk of negative outcomes, injury or death, and reduces the cost to the hospital. Although the VA recently awarded Hoana a Federal Supply Contract to outfit VA hospital beds at $16.20 per day per bed, this program is funded with $1.7 million from the U.S. Army Medical Research Command and the Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center.

 "This partnership is a tremendous testament to the growing awareness of patient safety and the remarkable commitment of these visionary partners to make a difference," said Patrick Sullivan, PhD and chief executive officer of Hoana Medical. "Hospitals are complex organizations and it's hard to single out exactly what will improve patient safety; however, our experience shows that something as simple as finding patients in trouble early makes an enormous difference in their outcome. Hoana is dedicated to making a difference in healthcare and, so far, we have had hundreds of patient interventions around the country. This makes it easy to get up each day — we get intervention stories every week. This program will help to complete the visionary RRT work championed for so many years; LifeBed is the missing link. This partnership is great because it's the private sector and government working together to solve an enormous problem that touches one-in-four Americans each year."

"Recent studies show respiratory function is the leading indicator of pending patient distress," said Larry Burgess, the program's principal investigator and professor of medicine at the University of Hawaii John Burns School of Medicine. "The Joint Commission wrote that '4 to 17 percent of inpatient admissions have critical events such as cardiopulmonary and respiratory arrests and vital sign changes, with warning signs preceding events by an average of 6 to 8 hours (Joint Commission, 2007).'"

 With nearly 40 percent of all unexpected hospital deaths occurring on the med-surg floor, continuous patient vigilance is a rapidly growing trend. Hospitals across the country are working to implement solutions that meet the Joint Commission's patient safety goals for 2009, while enhancing nurse and patient satisfaction.

With most medical facilities around the country looking for ways to improve patient safety and satisfaction, the LifeBed represents new technology that will enhance the standard of care on the general care floor.

Source Hoana Medical, Inc.