By Anjani Kommisetti
The Covid-19 pandemic was a storm which disrupted everything – from business processes to business models to the way we work and consume services. The healthcare sector, which took the bulk of the load during the peak of the pandemic, innovated in a big way to provide quality services to patients. One of the most effective innovations was remote health care or remote patient monitoring.
However, while remote patient monitoring has the potential to completely transform healthcare, it has its fair share of challenges. Traditional healthcare devices are proprietary and do not have high-performance remote access, monitoring and management features. For most devices, patient monitoring must be done in-room, and any interaction with medical devices must be done at the device itself. This can be time-consuming for nursing staff and impact patient response times, especially during staff shortages. Ensuring data security is also a huge challenge as the data that is transmitted over a network has to be secure and compliant to meet the strict standards of the healthcare sector.
Hence, while hospitals and healthcare facilities are increasingly investing in sophisticated, state-of-the-art medical devices and IT systems to provide high-quality care, traditional patient monitoring systems lack the centralized monitoring capabilities needed to streamline care.
How KVM-over-IP switches can help
Today, interest in remote monitoring and access for hospitals is growing, and KVM Remote Access & Control switches are a preferred option. KVM-over-IP switches are a low bandwidth solution for extending Keyboard, Video, and Mouse (KVM) signals from any server or computer over a simple LAN, WAN or Internet connection.
KVM over IP switches help remote users access and control several diverse hardware environments, which makes them perfect for hospital environments having diverse medical equipment with different platforms. KVM over IP solutions can provide an efficient and cost-effective way for hospitals to monitor a wide variety of equipment from different manufacturers, as well as serve the needs of different users—from nurses, doctors, and consultants to IT and technical support.
We suggest some of the key areas where KVM over IP solutions can help:
Centralized management of devices: Whether it’s high-tech equipment like CT scanners and MRI machines or in-room patient monitoring equipment, modern healthcare devices are computer-based. By connecting these devices to the network via KVM-over-IP switches, IT technicians can access them remotely from one central location, allowing for more proactive support and maintenance, and saving on travel time.
Remotely monitoring the health of the patients: By deploying a KVM-over-IP solution, healthcare equipment can be monitored remotely, such as at nurse stations or centralized monitoring stations, allowing hospital staff to stay on top of changes to patient health and avoid responding reactively to emergencies.
Controlled access to devices for compliance: Controlled access is built into all quality KVM-over-IP switches, allowing administrators to control who gets access and see a record of who’s been looking at what equipment—a crucial aspect of HIPAA compliance.
Securing Patient Records and Data: Quality KVM-based solutions are engineered for strong security requirements and mandates. Some of the quality KVM-over-IP solutions meet government and military mandates, including AES & FIPS 140-2 encryption, Common Access Card (CAC) authentication, PIV, FIPS 201, HSPD-12 and IPv6 networking.
TCO: KVM-over-IP switches provide a cost-effective means of connecting in-room patient monitoring equipment to the centralized display points within a hospital, such as nurse stations and monitoring centres. Mcentres switches can be purchased and do not have recurring software license fees, unlike end-to-end healthcare solutions.
The quality and access to good quality healthcare can be significantly improved, if remote patient healthcare and remote monitoring of patients is made possible in a cost effect-effective India, today, the world too has a gigantic opportunity to provide quality healthcare services in the smallest of towns and villages using KVM-over-IP solutions. This will significantly improve the quality of healthcare services in India, and enable hospitals to free up critical healthcare staff to serve more critical patients.
Anjani Kommisetti, Country Manager, India & SAARC, Raritan & Servertech, brands of Legrand
(DISCLAIMER: The views expressed are sole of the author and ETHealthworld does not necessarily subscribe to them. ETHealthworld.com shall not be responsible for any damage caused to any person/organisation directly or indirectly.)