New Version of GetWellNetwork System Simplifies Clinical Workflow for Nurses and Provides Superior Patient Engagement Experience

GetWellNetwork improves pain medication management, patient orientation, and expands medication teaching.

Bethesda, Md., January 20, 2010 — GetWellNetwork, Inc. announced a new version of its flagship interactive patient care system — version 3.6 — to help hospitals and nurses streamline some of the most common, yet important patient-related activities. A key feature of the new GetWellNetwork system is an innovative patient orientation process that helps hospitals immediately engage patients in their care while addressing one of their critical priorities ensuring patient safety. Additionally, the new version of the GetWellNetwork system provides nurses with new tools that help manage a variety of patients’ needs as well as administrative functions from a single dashboard.

“There are few companies who understand nurses’ and patients’ needs as well as GetWellNetwork,” said Kathy Tagnesi, chief nursing officer at Winchester Medical Center. “The GetWellNetwork system helps our nursing staff stay better connected to their patients and enables our hospital to meet important compliance standards set by The Joint Commission around pain management. But, the greatest benefit we derive is measurable gains in patient satisfaction and patient safety — engaging patients in their own recovery is a valuable benefit we see everyday with GetWellNetwork.”

New features of the GetWellNetwork system:

Nursing Dashboard — From a single dashboard, nurses can search for patients, view patient profiles, send messages, order predefined sets of education materials relevant for their patients’ diagnosis, and use discharge planning tools to assess patients’ readiness. Improvements also include more intuitive and user-friendly enhancements that make it easier and faster for nurses to access key features of the GetWellNetwork system all of which help nurses provide better patient care from beginning to end.

Medication Teaching — Recognizing the high priority placed by hospitals to reduce errors or misuse of medication, GetWellNetwork is providing enhanced teaching tools that help patients access accurate information about their prescribed medicines right from their bedside TV. This helps to reinforce and supplement a physician’s bedside teaching by allowing patients to return to specific information about their medications as often as needed, and alert nurses when they have follow-up questions. The newly redesigned, user-friendly medication teaching tool helps patients and family members easily learn about potential side-effects, generic alternatives, and see pictures of the medication to help them learn to identify the correct drug. The enhancements make it easier than ever for patients to find the information they need and be an active participant in their health care.

Pain Management Interface — Another key improvement is the integration of the pain management interface with the hospital bedside barcode technology, the clinical back-end system and staff paging system. By integrating all of these important systems together, when patients provide ratings of their pain on the GetWellNetwork system, their nurse is paged in real-time to enable rapid response. Hospitals also gain operational efficiency through the integration to the hospital’s EMR system for accurate and automated documentation to patient records. In addition to providing faster and better care, the pain management feature helps hospitals meet the Joint Commission’s requirement for hospitals to re-assess patients’ pain levels at regular intervals following delivery of pain medicines.

New Patient Orientation — Hospitals now have the option to select default welcome orientation videos that serve as the first set of content available for patients when they turn on the TV. This gives hospital clinical staff the opportunity to communicate important messages to patients, such as safety tips or hospital rules as soon as patients arrive in their rooms. Additionally, by giving patients the opportunity to learn about the GetWellNetwork system at their bedside in the orientation process, patients are immediately engaged in their care and given control of their environment.

“It has never been more critical for hospitals to leverage health technology systems that enable greater patient engagement and improvements in operational efficiencies, which is the basis of GetWellNetwork,” said Robin Cavanaugh, chief technology officer, GetWellNetwork, Inc., “Because nurses are on the frontline of patient care, we made focused enhancements in our solution that directly address their needs by streamlining everyday tasks that enable better communication and engagement with their patients.”

About GetWellNetwork, Inc.
GetWellNetwork, Inc. uses the bedside TV to entertain, educate, and empower hospital patients and caregivers to be more actively engaged in their care. This patient-centered approach improves both satisfaction and outcomes for patients and hospitals. GetWellNetwork is the leader in interactive patient care solutions and exclusively endorsed by the American Hospital Association. More information about GetWellNetwork can be found at www.GetWellNetwork.com.