Widely recognized as one of the leading pediatric hospital in the country, Children’s Hospital Boston is also the largest, offering more than 300 beds to some of the nation’s most challenging and youthful patients. This esteemed center of comprehensive medical care for adolescents also serves as the primary pediatric teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School and is the largest provider of health care to children in Massachusetts. Children’s Hospital admits more than 21,000 inpatients a year. Through its outpatient clinics and Emergency Services, it serves an additional 300,000 patients.

With such standing in the health care industry, it was no small matter when Children’s Hospital decided to begin the transition from mainframe to desktop technologies several years ago, a move that subsequently led to its choosing Sony display monitors for all of its growing IT needs.

Initially, the hospital purchased 600 Sony 17-inch (viewable area, measured diagonally) tube-based monitors for its desktop installations. Since last fall, however, Children’s Hospital has begun rolling in the stylish Sony 15-inch (viewable area, measured diagonally) SDM-M51 flat-panel LCD monitor, now destined for all new PC workstations and for gradually swapping out the tube-based displays.

“What drives our continuing technology investment is our desire to meet the functional needs of our patients and staff,” says Scott Ogawa, the hospital’s chief technology officer. “Space is at a premium here—nurses and clinicians don’t always have the luxury of having individual offices, so workstations and conference rooms can get pretty cramped. The flat-panel monitors have allowed us to provide computer access in those areas where it wasn’t possible before.”

COMMITED TO THE CUTTING EDGE

Six hundred clinical workstations are located throughout Children’s Hospital—all of them fitted with 15-inch M51s—where any one of 3,000 hospital staff members may be using them at any given time. In addition, all of the hospital’s 200 outpatient examination rooms also now have the space-efficient LCD displays.

Daniel Nigrin, who is senior vice president of information services and chief information officer and a practicing specialist in pediatric endocrinology, says that he has already begun to see the benefits of the LCD displays. “They’re making it possible to interact with our patients in a more dynamic way,” says Nigrin. “Having computer workstations right in the examination rooms is both convenient and time efficient. And it can also be an effective tool for interacting with patients and their families. Some doctors, for example, are using graphical displays to demonstrate to patients their medical progress, or to display digital imaging studies, oreven to use the Internet for ducational purposes,” explains Nigrin.

The sleek, stylish screens also have an incidental benefit: demonstrating Children’s Hospital’s commitment to being current. “Having these screens in the examination rooms does give the sense that we’re on the cutting-edge,” says Nigrin. “Often parents are present with their children, and it’s reassuring for them to know that we’re using the latest technology to its best advantage.”

GOING PC

Children’s Hospital Boston began the move to desktop technologies in 1997. According to Steven Mullen, PC network operations system manager, “We performed pricing and marketing comparisons, and found that the product that best met our needs was the Sony monitor.” Based on the level of satisfaction since then, “we were very comfortable in standardizing Sony as our monitor of choice,” says Mullen.

In addition to the M51’s space-efficient footprint, the other major factor that went into choosing the 15-inch monitor was its multimedia capability. “We’re hoping to stream teaching or training media directly to our workstations throughout the hospital,” says Mullen. On the to-do list are streaming video, interactive lessons, and demonstrations of medical techniques, some of which the information services department has begun offering as a pilot program. “Hopefully we can leverage this technology to the wider user community as well,” says Mullen.

But for now, the lightweight, less than two-inch thick LCD displays are being put to good use. Of the 3,000 computer worksites within the hospital (all of which are supplied with Sony monitors), nearly onethird are M51s, with 600 of them located at clinical workstations. “Doctors, nurses, and clinicians are moving from floor-to-floor throughout the day,” explains Mullen, “and they want to take their functionality with them.”

GOING MOBILE

An additional 200 Sony SDMM81 18-inch (viewable area, measured diagonally) flat-panel screens have found their way into Children’s Hospital’s three highly specialized ICUs. And they’re mobile. Each monitor is mounted to a Johnny-5 Cart, which is an adjustable wheeled cart retrofitted to support a PC and a monitor. These moveable units provide immediate data entry and retrieval, using electronic medical record software that can display a patient’s entire electronic medical history on a large screen.

Typically placed at the bedside of critically ill children, the tethered workstations may need to be moved during a crisis, however—hence the wheels.

Both of the mobile and fixed Sony monitors installed throughout the hospital are helping to greatly reduce the cumbersome and timeconsuming process of manually creating paper records and transporting hard-copy files between remote locations. And that has proven to be a major benefit, says Jason Baker, clinical lead for the ICU electronic medical record project and a practicing nurse in the cardiac intensive care unit.

Baker treats some of the hospital’s smallest and most seriously ill patients, typically babies less than one year old with critical heart problems. He notes that having the mobile units in the ICU not only allows real-time data entry and retrieval, but can also lead to increased accuracy. “No one wants to go back to paper,” says Baker.

And how is it working with the Sony monitors? “Actually, they get beat up a lot,” replies Baker. “But they’ve been very durable. We’re all different sizes, so we’re constantly readjusting and pushing on them to suit our individual comfort levels. But they just keep doing what they’re supposed to do.” And the screen itself? “It’s crisp,” says Baker, who appreciates the fact that the screen readable from a variety of angles, “which is helpful when you might have a team of four to ten people around them.”

Mullen reports that many of the hospital staff also like the backlighting feature of the LCD monitors which, combined with an anti-glare surface and Sony’s Digital FlexRes™ and Advanced Auto ImageSet technologies, results in sharp, accurate image display. And the monitors have been functioning problem-free—a quality that has been endearing Sony monitors to the hospital all along.

“They’ve been great,” notes Nigrin.“We’re looking for equipment that’s reliable, and that’s another reason why we’ve stayed with Sony. Also, prices have come down, and that has allowed us to begin using this technology in a more widespread fashion.”

SERVICE IS MORE THAN SELLING BOXES

“We’re not just selling product, but innovative solutions,” says Dan Quigley, key account executive of corporate sales for Sony Electronics. “Sony has worked closely with Children’s Hospital over the years to help supply their display needs. In this case, the challenge was to place flat-panel technology in a mobile environment. Our monitors are thinner and lighter than almost all of our competitors’ and that was also a factor in determining their appropriateness for mobile applications.”

“What Sony now offers is a comprehensive information solution that merges information and multimedia technologies,” says Quigley. “And that’s something the hospital will be able to continue to explore with the addition of these versatile displays.”

For more information, visit www.sony.com/professional.