June 13, 2007

Ascertaining Business Need for that new Widget

You know that nifty new tool, just around the corner. Maybe it is Surface, a 30-inch tabletop display which is used through a touch or gesture. The tabletop display can recognize more than one touch at a time, enabling multiple users to collaborate and interact. It also has the cool feature to recognize physical objects marked with a special ID tag. So now the mouse and keyboard aren’t apart of the computer interaction experience.

This is revolutionary. Imagine a bed board application right on the table top. User access is determined by their barcode on the badge. Triggers for services are automatic paging to housekeeping. Which in this model is staffed to have a bed cleared within 15 minutes.

Now obviously this is a little to new in the hype cycle to be implemented, but let’s go through the exercise of assessing how this potential technology will be useful to our healthcare facility.

 

Table Top Computing Bed Boards

Description

Application accessible via countertops in hospitals and on the walls by patient rooms.. Wireless service triggers beepers for cleaning service.

Impact on Customers

Clear concise picture of who is in which bed. Also helps with the patient flow monitors.

Impact on Capital

Streamlining patient flow improves capacity.

Impact of Resources

Decrease overhead in bed maintenance in patient access.

Impact on Cycle time

Accelerates the cycle time by improving the location of each patient based on movement.

The goal of this exercise is to cut through the hype and understand the purpose, business intent, and goals of the emerging technology. Obviously more detail is needed, and a larger pool of individuals ascertaining impact. However, the point is to relate and describe the process.

Posted by Elyse at June 13, 2007 7:58 AM