Opinions on Fetal Monitoring Systems

Published Oct 7, 2003

1 Post

Folks -

I am a CIO for a rural muti-hospital system that is looking to replace our current fetal monitoring system and would like your opnions/feedback. I believe L&D nurses will be my best source for objective info.

Quick Background:

1. We currently use GE Corometrics QS/1 and OBlink. System is > 7 yrs old and GE wants a lot of $$ to upgrade. Plus we have had very poor experiences with GE on support and security upgrades. Plus maint fees are pretty steep. So it looks like it is worth our while to shop around before upgrading.

2. L&D Nurse Manager and most of staff have been here for long time. Very nice and competent nurses....but they have little experience with other fetal monitoring systems or IT systems in general. In my kickoff meeting they "hoped" I would handle this ...they would rather I just make it happen. I will try to involve them as much as they will allow, but for now I am kind of dead-ended.

3. Approx 800 births/yr; rural facility (no NICU); 6 delivery rooms (one for water birth); Delivering MD's: 5 OB's, 12 Family Practioners, 3 midwives. We have an existing in-house developed web-based Physician Portal which allows MD's to remotely view real-time waveforms, etc through connection to GE OBLink web server. MD's and nurses love this.

Needs

1. The L&D staff only wants surveillance monitoring from a central station for next 1-2 yrs.

2. No interest in charting/documentation at this time. We are also in the midst of replacing HIS (by 2004/5) so L&D will have a say in how we move to EMR in their unit. So new system would need to be flexible to allow this in future.

3. Must have a web-based GUI that will allow real-time, secure viewing of waveforms by MD, etc.

4. Have

Question:

Can you all recommend any vendors that you are satisfied with(at current or previous facilities) and meet the needs list (or part of it)? Your experiences/comments are valuable to me.

Thanks in advance.