Nurse call systems are becoming more intuitive and easy to use, with specialized options that allow nurses to give more personalized care, according to an article on the Health Facilities Management magazines website.
Nurse call systems have evolved beyond just life-safety provisions. They can be IP-based with session initiation protocol (SIP), allowing nurses to initiate and receive communications from any location, and voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) that allows users to make phonier calls with an Internet connection.
Nurse call systems can now be integrated with other data and communication systems and connected to handheld communications that enable nurses to spend more time at the bedside and less at a computer station.
Standardization in nurse call technology is also important as hospitals share knowledge or consolidate, according to the article.
"Consolidation is everywhere in health care and the biggest changes that we see in purchasing flow from that," says Larry Ball, director of marketing for Rauland-Borg Healthcare, Mount Prospect, Ill. "As hospitals consolidate, they have greater interest in standardization on such clinical systems as nurse call solutions. We work with centralized purchasing far more today than we did in the past."
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