If a pilot project at a California hospital works out, a new iPhone app will get a boost toward replacing a multiplicity of overlapping communication systems for nurses at many other hospitals as well.

The number of communication devices that nurses are required to wear on their hips has been gradually increasing for many years.

At Huntington Hospital in Pasadena, Calif., nurses were using hospital-provided pagers, wireless phones and a separate alarm system, also connected to a pager, to help them do their jobs. But for the past three months, staff at the 636-bed facility has participated in a pilot program to help streamline their communication system.

Called Voalté One (derived from the first two letters of “voice, alarm and text”), the application was developed specifically for Apple’s iPhone. It enables users to send and receive text messages, make voice calls and receive critical-care alarms all through one device – not three.

Ron Rutherford, a registered nurse and Huntington’s director of informatics, has watched nurses' the communication burdens multiply during his 25 years in the healthcare industry.  He says he’s never used a communication system like Voalté.

“No special user skills are necessary, and a lot of our users are already familiar with the technology, so it’s easy to adapt to. It’s a consumer device being used in a hospital, which is a rarity,” he says.

Typical devices used in hospitals are customized for the healthcare industry, Rutherford explains, which makes it more expensive, more proprietary and more difficult to learn. In contrast, with the Voalté application, a standard phone is used.

“Millions have been sold so it’s proven technology,” Rutherford says of the Apple iPhone. “The screen is very crisp and clear; the application is robust. It works well, and the nurses have really embraced it.”

Voalté was the brainchild of Trey Lauderdale, who noticed that besides nurses' caregiver duties were such tasks as answering phones, pagers and call lights. At the time, Lauderdale was working for a company that provided alarm management/automated event-notification solutions for healthcare facilities.

Lauderdale and his partners created a Florida company that gives nurses what they need - an integrated communication solution.

Last year, a senior information-technology leader at Huntington came across the Voalté system in a trade magazine and contacted Lauderdale.

“We told him we noticed that they were on the East Coast and wanted to see if Trey was interested in a West Coast presence,” Rutherford says. “We are always looking to be innovative and to use technology to improve patient care. It worked out to the best advantage for both of us.”

Although Huntington was the first West Coast hospital to use the communication system, the initial pilot was at Sarasota Memorial Hospital in Florida. Since October, when Huntington nurses began using the system, they have been able to focus more on their patients, Rutherford says.

“There’s less need to shout ‘Where are you?’ if you need a nurse. You just text.  And there’s also less need for overhead paging,” he says.

Voalté combines phone calls across the hospital PBX, text messaging via a visual user directory and user-friendly alarm management. Caregivers can receive and respond to alarms dispatched by more than 200 hospital systems and devices.

Rutherford adds that the alarm system is helpful because it prioritizes calls to let staff know what’s important: “Do you need to drop everything and run, or can it wait?

"It helps us provide better patient care, and when I go to the floor myself, it’s noticeably quieter.”

For more information, visit www.Voalte.com or call 941-312-2830.