Improving patient care via open IoT ecosystem

The system will gather and process patient monitoring data to improve patient care in hospitals and home care environments.

According to Julian M. Goldman, Physician at Massachusetts General Hospital MD and co-leader of the healthcare task group for the IIC, in the US alone, 200,000-400,000 people die in hospitals each year due to preventable medical errors. The advent of accessible IIoT technologies has the potential to remedy this, but the slow pace of technology adoption and proprietary solutions from medical device manufacturers makes it difficult. Caregivers must implement a cost-effective solution and streamline stages of a patient's treatment. RTI has joined fellow IIC members to demonstrate how IIoT technologies, such as the Data Distribution Service (DDS) standard, can address the challenges of complex hospital environments with the same reliability, security and scalability proven in other industries.

RTI's Connext DDS technology will provide the connectivity platform for the Connected Care Testbed, leading the industry in providing quality care while improving the safety and efficiency of healthcare. The MD PnP Integrated Clinical Environment (ICE) will also support clinical and hospital device communication and PTC Thingworx will underpin the user interfaces and cloud applications. Infosys will be the primary system integrator for the project and will provide their Infosys Information Platform for data analytics.

Phase one of the Connected Care Testbed project begins immediately with the integration of the various partner technologies and products into a solution stack. The initial remote care sites are a single volunteer household for home care and the Massachusetts General MD PnP laboratory for clinical care.

"While the growth of connected devices is exciting, the inspiring potential of the Industrial IoT lies in industries where technology will truly change the world, such as healthcare," said Stan Schneider, CEO of RTI. "At RTI, our goal is to power the connected world of our future and we believe the Connected Care Testbed will play a crucial role. We look forward to collaborating with our partners to improve the quality of life for patients, caregivers and doctors."

"We are thrilled to have RTI contribute to the IIC's Connected Care Testbed and help convey our vision of a safer, more efficient healthcare system," said Dr. Richard Soley, Executive Director of the IIC. "RTI has been a large part of the successes of our previous testbeds and we are confident their expertise in IIoT healthcare solutions will deliver the same value."

"RTI was an obvious choice in partners for the Connected Care Testbed as an established leader in the IIC with a proven track record of delivering superior IIoT solutions for the healthcare industry," said JayRaj Nair, Head of IoT Practice at Infosys. "We were impressed with RTI's enabling of connected, resilient medical devices, bringing real world experience to this initiative. We look forward to a successful partnership and drastically improving the healthcare industry."