Cisco and Tiani Spirit Deploy the Latest Development in Health Care Information-Exchange Technology in Europe

VIENNA, October 21, 2009 – Cisco and the Austrian software company Tiani Spirit today announced the availability in Europe of the Cisco® Medical Data Exchange Solution (MDES), which is intended to help health care providers to access patient data with a high degree of security regardless of the provider's location or IT system. MDES combines Cisco's Application Extension Platform and Integrated Services Router (ISR) with Tiani Spirit's Electronic Health Record management software, enabling the network to be the platform for sharing and exchanging medical information and records.

Patients often receive care at numerous facilities, and individual medical records consequently reside at multiple locations. Exchanging medical data between health care facilities is challenging and expensive, particularly because of incompatible IT systems and data formats. By incorporating a patient index and a health care record translation function into the network, MDES is designed to allow information to be viewed with a high degree of security from anywhere on the health care network, irrespective of the IT system or data format of the record.

Cisco MDES addresses the following information-access challenges that health care providers face today:

Improving communication between health care professionals by providing access to records and patient information irrespective of their location on the health care network;
Enhancing the quality of care by providing health care professionals with a comprehensive view of patient's medical history before diagnosis and treatment;
Deploying, scaling across large environments and gradually integrating systems. Unlike other solutions, MDES does not need a centralized data center or database for the information, making this task much easier. It also means that patient data is not copied to a central system but accessed remotely using local systems.

^{Patients will need to provide full consent to the sharing of records in compliance with country laws where applicable.}

Facts/Highlights:

Klinikum Wels-Grieskirchen hospital in Austria uses Cisco MDES to improve physician and patient satisfaction and lower operating costs. Following the merger of the Wels and Grieskirchen hospitals it was important that information could be shared in real time between health care facilities (for example, nursing homes), but integrating the IT systems from the two hospitals was difficult. Cisco MDES has allowed Klinikum Wels-Grieskirchen to make patient information available across the newly expanded health care network, helping the hospital to enhance the experience for its patients while reducing the costs of managing the data.
Cisco MDES operates over the Cisco Medical-Grade Network, which provides patient-centric access to data, results and reports as well as improving workflow and operations for increased productivity and efficiency. Cisco MDES also conforms to the Integrating Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) security standard, a framework of standards that allows disparate systems to exchange medical data with a high degree of security.
MDES achieved the highest "score" out of all solutions being tested at the recent Global IHE Connectathon and the European IHE Connectathon, the health care IT industry's large-scale interoperability testing event.

Supporting Quotes:

Till Osswald, business development manager of Cisco Healthcare Europe

"Patients will often receive treatment from a number of health care professionals, in different locations and for different reasons. Having timely access to patient records is essential for providing the best treatment. All too often this information is fragmented across different health care institutions, and access can be restricted to a single health care system. Cisco MDES helps to break down the borders between health care organizations, allowing for quick and highly secure access to information that is critical for the effective treatment of patients."

Dr. Walter Aichinger, chief physician at Klinikum Wels-Grieskirchen

"Being able to share information across different health care organizations is essential if we are to deliver a truly patient-centric health care service. With increasing demands being placed on health care services, efficient and cost-effective access to data is a prerequisite for health care professionals to deliver the highest level of patient care."

Herbert Stöger, CEO of X-tention Information Technologies, IT service provider for Klinikum Wels-Grieskirchen

"Cisco MDES gives us flexibility in how we manage the hospital information systems. We can add or change our existing infrastructure without being locked into using a specific provider or applications. MDES has allowed Klinikum Wels-Grieskirchen to cost-effectively make patient information available across our newly expanded health care network despite the fact that it includes a variety of different systems."

Supporting Resources:

Tags / Keywords:

Cisco, MDES, Medical Data Exchange Solution, Tiani Spirit, Healthcare, Healthcare Information Exchange, HIE, Connected Health, Medical-Grade Network

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About X-tention Information Technologies

X-tention develops solutions that improve patient care. X-tention solutions support the exchange of health information across enterprises and communities, fostering collaboration between healthcare vendors, providers, and patients. With more than 10 years of experience in the healthcare integration field, the X-tention team advocates for the patient, leveraging existing systems and cultivating relationships with healthcare vendors to ensure the digital exchange of clinical information. X-Tention works closely with Tiani-Spirit in several projects or opportunities in EMEA such as Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, South Africa and Germany and develops other partners to work with the MDES Solution. For more information about X-tention, visit www.x-tention.at.

About Tiani Spirit GmbH

The Tiani-Spirit IHE SW stack is a direct translation of all the thousands of pages of the IHE framework with all the graphs and diagrams. Tiani is strongly engaged in the global IHE community and pushes IHE throughout the world. Tiani-SW Stack is used in large IHE projects in lower Austria, Switzerland and South Africa (Province of Gaudeng with > 400 clinics). Tiani-Spirit was a spin-off from Tiani-Medgraph, a European PACS Pioneer owned by Agfa Healthcare.