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Posted: 2021-03-24 03:29 PM . Last Modified: 2022-06-24 01:21 AM
Hello all,
Can I use OPC Connectivity to integrate EBO with Footwall ? How about integration with HL7?
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Best Regards
Espé
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Posted: 2021-04-02 11:11 AM
Hi Espé,
I think are a few items to address with your questions so let me try and answer in a few parts.
Firstly, when referring to the “Footwall” we generally mean the (typically) large screen that will be mounted to the wall at the foot of the patient bed (nurse call, medical gas etc are installed on the headwall above the patients head). These large screens are interactive displays that are controlled by the patient from their bed. They provide a myriad of services such as entertainment, educational content (content pushed by clinical teams relating to the patient’s health), access to social sites as well as access to services such as catering in the hospital. They also provide access into the patients’ medical information in the form of e-whiteboards (target discharge date, assigned doctors, appointment times etc) and access to teleconferencing with doctors. The footwall becomes the interactive “hub” for the patient and the room and provides the patient with the ability to call the nurse, adjust temperature settings and control lights all from the bed. An example is below
It is important to understand what functionality will be required from such systems to understand what data needs to be exchanged. As mentioned above the functionality that would be expected would be related to lighting control, shade control and temperature control. This is where EcoStruxure Building Operation would need to both serve information to the footwall and also consume information to make control decisions. The protocol that would be required will largely depend on the “system” that will be acting as the integration “hub” for the footwall. With systems such as TMM's MultiMed (more information available on the technology partner) a webservice interface is used to share the data between systems and allows the patient to control and view environmental information about their room. OPC can of course also be used and it will be largely based on the protocols supported by the footwall provider.
The second part of your question related to HL7. HL7 (Health Level Seven) in its simplest terms is a messaging standard that was developed and is used to exchange data between clinical systems (like BACnet in the buildings context). It provides a framework for systems/applications to “seamlessly” exchange data such as between radiology information system (RIS), lab information system (LIS), hospital information system (HIS), and electronic medical record (EMR). It is used by the majority of health system globally as the standard framework. Hospitals will be looking for HL7-compliamnt software when overhauling their Health Information Systems (HIS). The Clinical Environment Optimization (CEO) (more information available here) Solution was developed by Schneider Electric with a HL7 interface to integrate messages from the Admission, Discharge and Transfer (patient admission) systems with EcoStruxure Building Operation. The CEO software supports HL7 and allows occupancy data related to the patient room to be shared with the BMS. This allows for a more optimized control of the patient room based on room allocation and occupancy, Allowing HVAC and lighting to be either put into a setback mode (when patients have been discharged or transferred to surgery for example) or controlled to normal parameters. By using information related to patient admission data the patient room environmental conditions can be optimized for energy saving reasons.
In addition to just patient admission data we also have a partnership with ThoughtWire (more information available here) who provide a comprehensive integration platform and digital twin that is based on FHIR and HL7. The value of their platform is that all content related to the clinical environment can be combined with data from the operational systems (HVAC, security, lifts etc). Consider a patient who is an infection risk is admitted to a room where there is an issue with the HVAC system would this pose a risk for caregivers and other patients? With the ThoughtWire platform this context and applies reasoning and workflows to avoid this type of risk. This is just one very simple example and I would recommend you refer to the solution description to learn more and please feel free to ask more questions if you need more clarification
The footwall would of course require patient information and would therefore need to have HL7 interfaces however EcoStruxure Building Operation would not interface with it using HL7 but would instead use a generic webservice based on the manufacture’s options
Many Thanks
Chris Roberts – Global Solution Architect and Offer Director for Healthcare
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