It wasn’t just the devices themselves that required cleaning and disinfection. The cabling that ran behind them was also a gathering spot for dust and germs. HP gets around this issue by integrating as much technology as possible into the device, and then wall-mounting or configuring them into “workstations on wheels” to reduce cable clutter and the number of external peripherals.
“The typical computers we were using on a VESA bracket behind the monitor still had all of the cables, nooks, and crannies that dust, dirt, grime, and contaminants could get into,” Troyer says.
So far, Akron Children’s has deployed more than 500 HP EliteBook 840 G5 Healthcare Edition notebooks to clinicians and 400 HP EliteOne 800 G4 Healthcare Edition All-in-One PCs in hospital settings, NICUs and affiliate community health centers and pediatric offices, with plans to deploy HP Healthcare Edition models in public-facing spaces such as welcome desks and registration areas.
The ultimate benefit, Troyer adds, is protecting the health and safety of children. “We’re keeping our environment clean while ensuring that clinicians’ time is spent taking care of the kiddos,” she says.
Safer, smarter and secured
As technology becomes more deeply integrated into patient care and clinical workflows, and more information is stored and communicated using electronic medical records, clinical spaces need devices designed to meet new challenges.
Computers in clinical spaces traditionally require peripherals like proximity badge readers, fingerprint scanners and web cameras, which often get plugged into USB ports and scattered around a desk. These peripherals create more hard-to-clean surfaces where pathogens can linger, and the devices frequently get lost or broken.
HP built these features into the germicidal wipe-resistant bodies of the Healthcare Edition PCs and clinical review displays. This allows clinicians to quickly log in and out of devices, stay up-to-date with new safety requirements for electronic prescribing, and use telemedicine services that meet HIPAA requirements without adding additional external devices that need to be disinfected.
The Healthcare Edition devices also help keep patients’ private health data safe. Between 2010 and 2017, around 176.4 million patient records were impacted by data breaches, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association, and individual patient records can sell for about $60 each on the dark web.
The Sure Start feature offers sophisticated antivirus protection built into the device. If malware, rootkits or corruption are detected, the computer self-heals by restoring the most recent unaffected version of the firmware.
“Healthcare is under attack because of the value of the data,” Bhadury explains. “In our devices, HP Sure Start protects users from hackers at a deep firmware level, and the HealthCare Edition all-in-one and notebook have integrated privacy filters that can be toggled on and off.”
Healthcare providers are required to have HIPAA-compliant privacy screen filters, yet external filters often get removed. The on-off integrated privacy filter built into the display causes the screen to appear dark when viewed from an angle preventing people other than the user from seeing protected health information, while allowing clinicians to share their screen with colleagues when needed.
“As a clinician these products are very exciting to me, as it protects patients and staff,” Schmidt says. “Products like these need to be engaged anywhere there is patient contact, especially in the critical care setting.”
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