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EMERGIN'S INNOVATIVE SOLUTION CREATES THE TECHNOLOGY FOUNDATION FOR OHIOHEALTH'S DUBLIN METHODIST HOSPITAL

DUBLIN, OHIO (April 5, 2007) — Dublin Methodist Hospital recently signed a contract with Emergin, the leader in clinical alarm management and automated event notification solutions, to provide innovative technology to OhioHealth, a Fortune Magazine 100 Best Companies to Work For 2007. The 94-bed hospital, the first central Ohio hospital to use this technology, will deploy Emergin’s Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) as a foundational platform for clinical workflow and quality of care improvements.

“We consider Emergin’s technology as central to our comprehensive quality care initiative,” said Cheryl Herbert, president of Dublin Methodist Hospital. “Our plan is to design an IT architecture from the ground up which ensures that life-critical alarm information from our clinical systems is easily accessible across the organization allowing us to better serve patients and staff.”

“Dublin Methodist Hospital is a progressive organization which shares our philosophy of quality care,” said Bob Porterfield, director of product management, Emergin. “Our value is to automate clinical communications to provide timely delivery of critical information, allowing our customers to receive the highest quality of care possible.”

As part of the implementation, the new site will enhance Rauland-Borg Nurse Call and Philips Patient Monitoring Systems with Emergin’s alarm management capabilities, while nursing staff will use Vocera Communications badges as the primary mode of communication within the new facility. Each bed will be equipped with a telemetry device for monitoring a patient’s heart rate and rhythm. Alarms or events can be transmitted from the bed to the assigned caregivers via Emergin, providing notification of any concerning change in the patient’s condition. As a result, clinicians focus more on clinical and business processes to improve care and service, as well as streamlining communica-tions between patients and caregivers.

In all project decisions related to Dublin, OhioHealth’s team worked from twelve guiding principles and compared every decision to that framework. For example, the principle of “leveraging existing architecture” supported the selection of Emergin, because its business model is based on an open, vendor-neutral and device independent approach. Emergin is currently deployed at another OhioHealth site, Grant Medical Center in Columbus, Ohio. Emergin’s ESB is a component of the Emergin Integration Suite, which helps hospitals create a standards-based infrastructure through the orchestration of best-in-class systems.

Using a holistic systems design allows clinicians to better understand from a communications standpoint which patients
(and which nurses) are tied to which stations, and ultimately communicate more effectively from caregiver to caregiver. Since each of the patient rooms will be private in the new hospital, nurses will be roaming multiple areas and longer hallways. Emergin will expedite service requests and prioritize alarms and events in order to ensure they are more effectively handled throughout the 325,000-square-foot facility. As a result, overhead paging will be greatly reduced, contributing to a more supportive healing environment.

“A key benefit of our ‘universal bed’ philosophy will be that patients will be able to remain in the same rooms, in the same units, with no transfers - from admission to discharge,” said Lamont Yoder, chief nursing officer. The combination of the Emergin solution and the ‘universal bed’ concept will enhance patient safety, and improve both patient and clinician satisfaction.

Over the next two years, Dublin Methodist Hospital will explore potential system integrations including Bed Management, the Hospital Information System, and IV Smart Pump Technology. All these potential solutions would further enhance information sent to communication devices and optimize the patient care process. "Creating a new culture from the beginning with the opening of a new hospital is a unique opportunity that allows us to maximize patient safety through the integration of technology,” said Yoder. “From both a facility and IT design standpoint, we are pushing the envelope on how we deliver care.”

About Dublin Methodist Hospital
Dublin Methodist Hospital, a 325,000-square-foot hospital on an 89-acre site will celebrate its grand opening in January 2008. The 94-bed hospital will have a 32-bed emergency department, inpatient and outpatient surgery services, labor and delivery, and general medical/surgical services. Each room will be adaptable to any level of care from medical/surgical to intensive care with a patient-focused atmosphere that reflects OhioHealth’s strong core values of compassion, excellence, stewardship and integrity. The hospital researched the latest trends in “evidence-based design” which reports the health benefits associated with medical facilities design features such as natural lighting, views of nature and artwork. The new rooms will be identical, acuity adaptable and “like-handed” to create standardization. Sound-absorbing ceiling tiles will help to reduce noise, and each room’s window can be partially opened for fresh air. Accent colors and 9’ ceilings will provide a sense of comfort and spaciousness for the caregivers, patients and visiting families. More information about Dublin Methodist may be found at www.ohiohealth.com.

About Emergin
Headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida, Emergin (a derivative of ‘emergency’ and ‘innovation ’) is the leading provider of clinical alarm and event management solutions for healthcare. Emergin has helped more than 5,000 enterprise organizations improve real-time communications, safety and quality. In healthcare, Emergin has provided messaging and connectivity solutions to more than 1,000 organizations, including five Malcolm Baldrige Quality Award recipients, 30% of the nation’s Magnet Hospitals, 50% of the Leapfrog Top-50 hospitals, and six of the Top-10 Heart Hospitals.

Contacts:
Kathy McCall
Emergin Inc.
561-886-3113
kathy.mccall@emergin.com

Lara Lindsay
OhioHealth Communications and Media Relations
614-544-4243
llindsay@OhioHealth.com

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