Each year, HIP Health Plan Of New York finds one or two of what chief technology officer Pedro Villalba calls "golden nuggets" in the company's IT "sandbox." The first golden nugget extracted this year from the sandbox--as the company's research lab is known--is a tablet PC with customized software that's used by nurses to gather information about hospital patients so the health-insurance company's case managers can recommend the most cost-effective treatments.
Two nurses are using the tablet PC in a pilot project that--if successful--will be expanded to 15 nurses on HIP's staff. In New York hospitals, nurses visit patients who are insured by the company and type each patient's case information into a standard form on the PC. A nurse then can swivel the machine's screen to tablet form and, using a stylus, write observations and comments in her own handwriting. The information is uploaded via a wireless network to a database accessible to case managers, who analyze the cases and make recommendations to caregivers within 24 hours.
06-13-2004, 11:20 PM
