Connectivity.
Connectivity brings huge benefits to POCT. What is connectivity? It is where POCT equipment- meters, analysers, etc., irrespective of location, are connected electronically through an existing electronic network, e.g., within a hospital network.
Connectivity offers many advantages over a paper system:
- transcription errors are eliminated
- quality control (QC) and password protection can be implemented efficiently
- a permanent electronic record of all results can be easily maintained
- QC data collection is easily established
- remote access for lockout, troubleshooting and calibrating is available
- bi-directional communications offer easy software upgrades and automatic data transfer
Canterbury Health Laboratories has a server linked to the Siemens Rapidlink© program which controls Siemens blood gas analysers. These blood gas analysers- 800 series and 348 models, are situated in a variety of labs and POCT environments in the CDHB.
Other types of networkable POCT equipment are i-STAT analysers, Clinitek 50's, glucose meters and so on. None of these are networked in the CDHB. Yet.
Creation of POCT 1-A Standard.
In the year 2000, about thirty different manufacturing concerns and clinical institutions, including hospital and international accreditation bodies, formed the Connectivity Industry Consortium (CIC). The CIC met regularly and agreed on consensual guidelines relating to networking protocols and manufacturing standards, and then disbanded. The resulting CIC standard was eventually labelled the POCT 1-A Standard and was replicated on CD-ROM. A copy exists in the CHLabs library.
Connectivity allows electronic control of: online password protection and QC lockout for operator safety; competency testing; consumable tracking; software upgrades; and so forth.
Plug and Play Connectivity- This is the ultimate aim of connectivity: you can take a device into any hospital, plug it into the wall and it will self-identify itself onto the network and send its data to whatever data manager you have. This may take some time for the concept to become a reality, but the standard is bringing facilities closer to it.
