Dell: Mobile Clinical Computing to bring patient info to point of care

Dell might be a name more familiarly associated with desktop and notebook PCs, printers, and servers, but the company also has an interest (in fact, a whole division) in healthcare. PublicTechnology.net this week caught up with Renzo Taal, the director of healthcare and life sciences at Dell EMEA, to discuss the company's new Mobile Clinical Computing (MCC) platform, and what it means for NHS Trusts, university hospitals, and the private healthcare sector, in the UK.

At its heart, Taal describes the Mobile Clinical Computing platform as 'health management; getting patient information to the point of care.' He adds: 'What we're doing is designing how the process in a particular hospital works, and ensuring it works at any time at the patient's bedside.'

Dell is rolling out the MCC globally, including a dozen early adopters across EMEA territories with three in the UK alone. One of the UK sites is the University of Birmingham hospital, which is currently in the design phase of the MCC platform. Dell is hopeful the deployment will begin from January/February 2010, and plans to roll it out in phases on a ward-by-ward, department-by-department basis.

The notion of launching such a shared solution inevitably conjures up images of the massively late and over budget national patient database, so what does Taal think of the disparaged project? 'It's always easy to criticise,' he says diplomatically. 'In theory there's nothing wrong with the idea of the NHS central database.'

'The biggest challenge is it looks like innovative hospitals above the curve have been penalised. It seems like the hospitals lagging are frustrated by the amount of work they have to do, whilst the ones up front are getting frustrated by being slowed down.'

He adds: 'That's where the challenge comes in for the UK. The IT staff and CIOs in hospitals know the current system is hampering them from making innovation.'

Despite the damaging perception of the central database, Taal is adamant it shouldn't be disbanded, explaining, 'If you scrap the central database it'll be a waste. The challenge is that everyone is trying to boil the ocean - there should be a central guideline, but organic growth within Trusts.'

Dell's Mobile Clinical Computing product aims to improve productivity for the healthcare sector's most valuable assets: doctors and nurses. However, the digitising of patient information and making it available at the point of care comes with significant upheaval for hospitals making the transition. 'The cost of healthcare is increasing because of an aging population. I think any administration will have to reduce expenditure, and we think that's possible if you share some of the IT infrastructure between hospitals, and get rid of legacy systems that take up a large amount of resources.'

'The government will be restrained and have to think outside of the box, make it possible to use shared data centres.'

Taal goes on to explain the findings of research carried out by Dell. 'Our research shows 85% of a hospital's IT budget is being spent to maintain current ‘mess' and environment. What we're trying to do is form a data centre environment with a standardised open data infrastructure - and preferably reduce the figure to below 50%.'

'This will help hospitals cope with the coming budget cuts, put the extra money into innovation and make healthcare more efficient.'