June 25, 2008 – Draeger implemented its Innovian Anesthesia information system at Walter Reed Army Medical Center’s (WRAMC) new Acute Pain Medicine Center, installed to monitor patient vital signs and create a real-time electronic medical record.
Innovian Anesthesia integrates near real-time, life-critical information from patient monitoring, medical therapy devices and other ancillary information systems. It gives clinicians fast access to patient data, which can minimize the duplication of efforts that often occurs with paper record systems.
The Innovian technology is designed to improve the user’s ability to monitor and document procedural events and notes as well as patient vital signs. Minimizing the time required for post-op notations reportedly allows physicians to treat more patients and frees anesthesiologists to focus on the patient instead of documentation.
Together with WRAMC’s clinical question module, physicians can enter research questions for Innovian to track and compile data from all procedures.
The Acute Pain Medicine Center at WRAMC is aiming to transform how the military treats pain by introducing regional anesthesia. Unlike general anesthesia, which completely sedates patients, regional anesthesia targets pain at its source. The use of high-tech nerve-blocking techniques prevents pain signals from reaching the patient’s brain. This alleviates localized pain and prevents the development of maladaptive nerve pathways, which have the potential to cause chronic pain issues.
For more information: www.draeger.com