Press Releases

Children's Healthcare of Atlanta Implements Wireless Mobile Workstations from Flo Healthcare

Atlanta, GA– September 7, 2005– Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, one of the leading pediatric health care systems in the U.S., has chosen Flo Healthcare, the leading maker of wireless mobile workstations based in Norcross, Ga., to provide 300 mobile workstations for patient data capture and access at the point-of-care within its two anchor hospitals.

Scheduled for rollout this month, the Flo mobile workstations will help the inpatient staff at Children's continue transitioning to electronic medical records (EMRs) and a paperless environment – a system-wide initiative launched by clinical leadership at Children's in June 2004 in partnership with the organization’s information systems and technology department. The next milestone in the EMR implementation will occur in mid-October, when clinical and clinical support staff at Children's begin using an electronic admission database, electronic medication administration records, and a new online tool to enhance communication between nurses and the hospitals' pharmacy departments.

"Our overall objective for this EMR implementation is to streamline workflows in order to enhance our caregivers' ability to provide integrated, safe and effective care," said Ellen Hansen, Director of Clinical Informatics at Children's. "To do this, we must enable our staff to break away from computers in the nurse stations and get closer to the bedside where much of the work, until now, has occurred on paper charts. The mobile carts from Flo Healthcare are one of the primary tools we are using to make this transition possible."

With eight years of experience helping hundreds of hospitals integrate wireless mobile computing devices at the point-of-care, Flo Healthcare is teaming closely with Children's to ensure that training and rollout of the Flo mobile workstations is managed and aligned effectively with the health system's larger EMR initiative.

"We are very pleased that Flo Healthcare is part of this strategic initiative at Children's, and that Flo mobile workstations will play such a significant role in improving the quality of care delivered to thousands of children in the future," said Tom Denmark, President and CEO of Flo Healthcare.

Approximately 1,600 nurses, physicians, respiratory care professionals and patient care technicians in the general care areas and intensive care units of Children's at Scottish Rite and Children's at Egleston will use the Flo mobile workstations. Caregivers at these sites, who work in other disciplines, such as social work and chaplaincy, also may use the Flo devices to access the patient data needed to perform their roles.

"After evaluating various types of devices, we decided to purchase carts for this next phase of our EMR rollout because they're mobile, can't be dropped, and have a small footprint that will enable our clinicians to get closer to the bedside," said Chris Paravate, Director of Implementations for Children's. "We needed our mobile workstations to be lightweight, easy to maneuver, and have a good battery run-time. In addition to meeting these needs, Flo's responsiveness to our suggestions and service history with other health care institutions helped our decision-making process."

The mobile device selection process was introduced within the organization in January 2005. Nearly 800 employees and physicians participated in the evaluation. They represented a range of functional groups, including patient care, clinical informatics, information systems and technology, occupational health, biomedical engineering and infection control.