Johns Hopkins University www.hopkinsmedicine.org and Microsoft www.microsoft.com are working together to revamp the patient safety technology solution called “Project Emerge” according to the publication “Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures” http://ventures.jhu.edu/jhtv-newsletter-issue-6. A more advanced, cloud-based system is needed for use in intensive care units. Johns Hopkins will supply clinical expertise while Microsoft will provide advanced technologies.
The original Project Emerge technology is a tablet application that coordinates and integrates all data from monitoring equipment and uses data from patient monitoring devices to restructure a hospital’s workflow. This is being done to eliminate the most common causes of preventable harm such as blood clots and pneumonia.
The technologies include Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform and services as well as software development expertise. Azure will collect and integrate information from several modern devices and provide critical analytics, computing, database, mobility, networking, storage, and web functions.
The final product will enable physicians to see trends in a patient’s care in one centralized location and allow physicians to access critical patient information from any hospital-approved Windows device. Johns Hopkins and Microsoft plan to scale the project quickly with pilot projects estimated to begin in 2016.
“Today’s intensive care patient room contains from 50 to 100 pieces of medical equipment developed by different manufacturers that rarely talk to one another,” reports Peter Pronovost Senior Vice President of Patient Safety and Quality for Johns Hopkins Medicine and Director of the Armstrong Institute www.hopkinsmedicine.org/armstrong.
This initiative is one of several collaborations between Johns Hopkins and Microsoft designed to foster innovative health-based technologies. Earlier this year, Microsoft became a sponsor of FastForward http://ventures.jhu.edu/fastforward which is JHU’s innovation hub. Johns Hopkins also recently joined Microsoft’s Partner Network http://mspartnermicrosoft.com.