Nuance Communications, Inc. has announced that Providence Health & Services, ranked by Thomson Reuters among the top 20 percent of best-performing health systems in the country, is deploying Dragon Medical 360 | Network Edition across its healthcare enterprise, making medical voice recognition available at 27 hospitals and 250 clinics.

by Susan Carr

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has released a report that describes the development and testing of software designed to be used by health industry professionals to report, analyze, correct, and prevent hazards resulting from the use of health information technology (IT). The software—Hazard Manager—is not available while still under development and consideration. The report describes why the software was developed, the results of an extensive testing period, feedback received from various stakeholders, and options for national implementation.

RF Technologies, a leading provider of radio frequency identification (RFID) healthcare safety and security solutions, has released a software update that adds a door loitering alarm and wander event reporting to its Code Alert Wandering Management Solution.

Wolters Kluwer Health, a leading global provider of information for healthcare professionals and students, announced several new enhancements will be added in June to Sentri7^®, a web-based, enterprise-wide electronic surveillance application that helps hospital staff identify at-risk patients.

The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) has implemented AeroScout’s Healthcare Visibility Solutions to automate temperature monitoring at UPMC St. Margaret Hospital and is rolling out wireless temperature monitoring as well as asset tracking and management across most of its U.S. hospitals. The advanced RFID (radio frequency identification) solutions leverage UPMC’s standard Wi-Fi network to avoid the purchase, installation and maintenance of a proprietary RFID network. The solutions are part of UPMC’s strategy of using smart technology to advance quality patient care and staff efficiency.

InterSystems Corporation, a global leader in software for connected care, has launched the next generation of its InterSystems HealthShare™ strategic informatics platform for interoperability and active analytics. Designed originally for public health information exchanges (HIEs) at regional, state and national levels, HealthShare has been extended and rearchitected to also deliver the advanced technologies needed by integrated delivery networks (IDNs).

Orange Coast Memorial Medical Center, a 218-bed hospital in Fountain Valley, Calif., and member of MemorialCare Health System, recently selected PerfectServe’s intelligent clinical communication platform to streamline and standardize secure communications between physicians and nursing, pharmacy and ancillary teams.