Program to Bring Innovations in Operating Room Workflow, Patient Safety

LiveData, Inc. is achieving significant progress on development work in association with a $500,000 contract awarded by the U.S. Army Small Business Administration (SBA) Commercialization Pilot Program (CPP). The contract is for work in accelerating the transition of LiveData’s latest data integration and display technologies from development to implementation and commercial deployment in military hospitals.

LiveData is using the support in its work on the integrated clinical environment with CIMIT’s Medical Device Plug-and-Play (MD PnP) team. The work is also being directed in part toward the development of LiveData PeriOp Manager, a comprehensive perioperative workflow management system.

The SBIR CPP is being overseen by the U.S. Army Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC), Fort Detrick, MD, in close cooperation with the TRICARE Management Activity; Joint Task Force, National Capital Area; and Walter Reed National Military Medical Center (WRNMMC).

The results of this development work will be managed by a system known as MD-ICEman, using an architecture for integrating medical technologies established by the MD PnP team. Building upon OR-Dashboard and its underlying real-time integration technology, PeriOp Manager extends the LiveData system throughout the surgical suite to coordinate patient flow, patient care, and related resources from preoperative assessment to discharge.

The system includes displays for family waiting areas, staff break rooms, and other areas of the hospital where visibility into surgical workflow is important.

PeriOp Manager delivers this via human-engineered clinical dashboards, wall, workstation and bedside displays, cell phones and pagers, and reports, and provides a full set of analytic tools for improving quality processes and OR workflow. The research will concentrate on such important functions as smart reminders and analytic tools for improving quality processes and OR workflow. PeriOp Manager is part of the OR-Dashboard system being developed with and installed at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

In use at such leading institutions as Massachusetts General Hospital, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, LiveData OR-Dashboard captures, synthesizes, and displays all relevant information about the surgical case.

PeriOp Manager responds to the strong national consensus in favor of standards, and this Commercialization Pilot Project will support the use of ICEman to replace proprietary interfaces with the evolving standard. The CPP phase is expected to accelerate the fielding of capabilities to soldiers and benefit the nation through stimulated technological innovation, improved manufacturing capability, and increased competition, productivity, and economic growth.

MD-ICEman is an implementation of the Integrated Clinical Environment (ICE); reflecting early involvement with the standard, its further development will continue to inform the ICE architecture and associated standards.

“This project has great potential to improve situational awareness in the Operating Rooms at WRNMMC in Bethesda, Maryland,” said Robert E. Connors, FACHE, PMP, Executive Health Manager, Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine. “The results should increase throughput of patients, while also improving patient safety.”

The contract expires on Oct. 15, 2012, but pending the Contracting Officer’s approval will likely be extended past that date to allow LiveData to interface its PeriOp Manager Application to the perioperative documentation systems in use at WRNMMC, said Connors, who is assigned to TATRC as the Contracting Officer’s Representative for the project.

“When multiple devices and technologies are involved, the issues of patient safety demand a strong, standards-based foundation. Our successes with OR-Dashboard have shown that LiveData can lead development of vital technology that will become the basis for an industry standard,” said Jeffrey Robbins, CEO. “LiveData’s approach to integration obtains value from the data by giving it context. As the only healthcare IT company identified for this CPP phase, we are especially proud to have earned TATRC’s confidence and ongoing support.”

The Army established the SBIR CPP in response to the 2006 National Defense Authorization Act, in order to increase Army SBIR technology transition and commercialization success. Transition support is now being provided to selected Army SBIR Phase II projects, such as MD-ICEman, for expanded research, development, testing, and evaluation of the Phase II technology. Approximately 25 current Army SBIR Phase II projects were identified for participation in this additional support.

In March 2011, TATRC identified LiveData for additional support in its Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant. Through developments in both MD PnP and PeriOp Manager, the additional support will be used to enable OR systems such as Healthcare IT software systems, patient monitors, and tracking systems to “talk” to each other. The current grant was received in September, 2011.

 Once the system is demonstrated and assessed for its impact on OR efficiency and patient safety, LiveData will continue to participate in medical device interoperability standards development.

This additional SBIR support represents a validation of LiveData’s value proposition for the Army developed through prior SBIR awards. LiveData OR-Dashboard, jump-started with the support of $1.3 million in SBIR grants through TATRC, provides the software foundation for ICEman. In 2007, LiveData received a new Phase I SBIR grant that conceptualized the work then implemented under Phase II.

About LiveData
LiveData is a leading innovator in real-time data integration and display technology. The company’s solutions gather data from any number of sources, coordinate it with team workflow, and present it as meaningful information on easy-to-read graphic displays. Leading medical institutions, including Massachusetts General Hospital, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, have selected LiveData OR-Dashboard to improve patient safety, team communication, and perioperative efficiency. Founded in 1991, LiveData is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Information is available at www.livedata.com.

About TATRC and the SBIR Program
The U.S. Army’s Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC) has played a prominent role in developing advanced medical technologies in such areas as: health informatics; medical imaging; mobile computing and remote monitoring; and simulation and training. TATRC has continued to be an important thought leader in areas such as the use of virtual reality tools, biomaterials and hospital-of-the-future concepts.

TATRC has been exploring and implementing telemedicine and other advanced medical technology solutions for over 15 years. By exploring new developments, TATRC strives to improve health care for the US Armed Forces, their families and the public sector.  Equally important has been TATRC’s partnership with numerous universities, commercial enterprises, and other federal agencies, supporting approximately 500 ongoing research projects. TATRC’s vision, as an important extension of its legacy, encompasses the creation of opportunities for technology transfer to the public sector as well as the battlefield.

Under SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research Program), a portion of a federal agency’s research and development effort is reserved for award to small business concerns through a uniform process having a first phase for determining the scientific and technical merit and feasibility of ideas that appear to have commercial potential, a second phase to further develop proposals which meet particular program needs, and when appropriate, a third phase in which commercial applications of R&D are funded by non-federal sources of capital.