The Air Products Center for Connected Care and Innovation, on the fifth floor of Lehigh Valley Health Network’s offices at One City Center in downtown Allentown, Pennsylvania is a bright, modern and airy space devoted to developing and testing innovative ideas in health care for the community.
Vistacom worked closely with LVHN to provide the type of collaborative environments that they envisioned. The type of technology solutions that were chosen play a critical role in providing the communication tools necessary to achieve success. These tools support the workflow and provide the flexibility needed to collaborate in both small and large spaces. Additionally, there is the capability to extend collaboration beyond the building to include experts and other staff that may be integral to the projects in remote locations.
One LVHN team utilizes a geocoding system that tracked homeless camps so its street medicine team can provide follow-up care to patients without permanent homes. BabyCam, which allows family members across the world to watch live videos of newborns, is another LVHN program. Another new innovation, called VICC – short for Virtual Inpatient Check-in/Check-out – connects surgeons and their patients via secure video to ensure a patient who had surgery the previous day is ready to go home. (Video available of VICC.)
One solution that brings big impact to the space is the Prysm software that was selected for the Tech Wall and the Project Room. Touch-screen capabilities accommodate multiple simultaneous users for sharing of content, video, apps and more. The end result is faster, data-driven decision making.
The center also includes a number of glass-enclosed conference rooms, customizable open-space rooms and smaller focus or huddle rooms equipped with the latest technology to test concepts. Some of the glass walls have cloaking capabilities that obscure the visibility of information written on screens to passers-by.
The space includes several telemedicine training rooms, including a mock exam room equipped with a high-definition camera and another that resembles a living room. The realistic environment enables health care providers to be trained on how post-surgical patients would use some of the special equipment, such as blood pressure cuffs or scales, at home. “The idea behind these three rooms is to set up an environment to take it to a new level,” said Joe Tracy, vice president for Connected Care and Innovation, because the “technology is always changing.”
