Hillrom (NYSE: HRC) today announced a new commercial partnership with Aiva, enabling hands-free communication for both patients and staff utilizing an in-room voice assistant and Hillrom’s Voalte® Mobile solution.
With this new capability, Hillrom’s Voalte system is the only mobile clinical communication platform with a comprehensive solution that includes hands-free caregiver-to-caregiver communication – unique to Hillrom – as well as nurse call, medical device integration, alert and alarm management and waveform digitization.
“Innovations that enhance caregivers’ ability to meet patient needs while maintaining infection controls is essential to both Hillrom and our customers, including Cedars-Sinai,” said Hillrom President and CEO John Groetelaars. “Our ability to now provide truly contact-free access to caregivers through our nurse call and Voalte solutions can help protect caregivers and the patients they serve, and we are excited to build upon this infrastructure using natural language processing to further advance connected care.”
“Our early work with both the Voalte and Aiva technology platforms has yielded enormous benefits, including reducing nursing interruptions and providing faster response times to patients,” said Darren Dworkin, senior vice president of Enterprise Information Services and Chief Information Officer at Cedars-Sinai. “We have deployed Aiva in hundreds of rooms, and marrying their advanced voice-recognition technology with Voalte’s mobile solution is a game-changer in modern hospital-based care.”
With appropriate patient authorization, Aiva technology utilizes voice services like Amazon Alexa to facilitate totally touch-free communication, allowing a caregiver to enter a patient room in full PPE and dial other caregivers (“Alexa, call the respiratory therapist”) through Hillrom’s Voalte mobile technology without touching their mobile device or PPE, both in and out of sterile environments. The Aiva technology also allows patients to speak to the device to contact a nurse. This request will be automatically routed to the nurse’s Hillrom Voalte mobile application and confirm to the patient that help is on the way. Patients can also control their in-room environment by saying “Alexa, turn on the TV” without requiring a member of the care team to help.i
“Our partnership with Cedars-Sinai and Hillrom will help advance the safety and productivity of caregivers while giving patients greater flexibility and confidence in their care environment,” said Sumeet Bhatia, founder and CEO of Aiva. “We look forward to bringing the benefits of voice assistants and our combined solution to other health systems.”
The combined Voalte/Aiva technology is available on a subscription basis in the United States.
