Communication solutions built for hospitals.

From treating injuries and wounds to viewing diagnostic results, sharing an image is an invaluable clinical aid. In some cases, hospital staff might already be using services to share this information outside your private network. In Ikonix Connect, users can take a photo or video, and send it to a contact or a group. Media captured inside Connect is sequestered away from the user's personal information, and stored encrypted to assure patient privacy.

Finding the right help is critical in an emergency. Most hospitals and health networks employ many thousands of people. With role-based messaging Ikonix Connect users can search by the type of assistance they need and access specialist advice right away, knowing immediately who's on-call, online, and with the right skills to help them or their patient.

Contacting colleagues has never been easier. Ikonix Connect integrates your hospital or LHN's active directory, along with the best contact methods. Users can specify which medium to use, voice & video calling, text messaging, or even a page. Those without hospital-issued phones can also include a personal phone number secure in the knowledge this is kept private, and can be hidden for outgoing calls from the app.

Hospitals have many dynamic and static teams. Maintenance or a nursing department might remain relatively constant, while quick treatment groups can form around a specific patient. With one-to-one and group messaging, Ikonix Connect users can locate and communicate with specific individuals, or create or join custom groups, from everyone who needs to respond to a Code to the specialists helping one patient.

Critical messaging is any information imparted that is time-sensitive and important, in the event of an emergency. To be called 'critical messaging,' sharing of this information must be to protect peoples’ lives, or key assets or as a priority.

In a hospital this could be a Code Blue alert of a patient’s vital signs failing, or a duress alarm from a worker in danger.

Ikonix Technology helps hospitals handle critical messaging with prioritisation of paging over a radio network, or in our critical messaging app, Ikonix Connect. In Connect, critical alerts can override a phone’s silent setting, which differentiates them from more routine communiques.

Modern technologies create a significant amount of data. Because systems and software come from many different vendors, they may not be immediately able to be connected, which creates an opportunity cost by not improving workflows through automation.

In a hospital setting, a wealth of data is created within each system but may require personnel to action information from one system, inputting it into another. For example, a duress alarm notifies the central location monitoring that system but does not broadcast it through the communications network. Using a Message Integration Engine or middleware, hospitals can connect these two, so the message is received from one service, and creates an action in another. This achieves a faster outcome, without needing people to respond between systems, with the goal of saving lives.

BMS stands for Building Management System. These solutions are the processing of information within the building itself. Example services controlled by the BMS include energy, air conditioning and ventilation (HVAC), lighting, fire detection and control, and other security and safety systems. Hospitals may also have integrated medical gas and complex plumbing and pumping infrastructure.

Ikonix Technology integrates with several BMS technologies, to transmit system information to mobile workers, so they can intercede before a fault causes disruption to critical health services.

Paging might seem like an outdated technology, but it still one of the most reliable and consistent communication technologies available.

Because it utilises radio frequencies with a longer wavelength than cellular, paging coverage can greatly exceed mobile phone coverage, at less power consumption. Paging can also be transmitted on a dedicated (and even encrypted) network, allowing messages to be received faster than an SMS. This is vital in a health setting where seconds matter.

Further, as hospitals are large concrete buildings, there are many instances where mobile signal does not reach areas of the hospital. Ikonix Technology works with our hospital partners to conduct site-by-site signal strength testing surveys and deploy distributed antenna systems to address coverage issues.

A blackspot is any location where signal coverage does not reach. Often this is because of the thick concrete and steel reinforcement of the structure.

Within a hospital there are also areas where rooms have been designed to prevent signal penetration. Radiology and nuclear medicine departments often have reduced signal due to the safety precautions in the building design.

These gaps in communication network availability can be analysed, and antenna systems designed and deployed to improve availability in those areas, remediating these blackspots for continuous network coverage for critical messaging.

‘Nurse call’ is the umbrella term for a system located near a patient’s bed or residence that allows them to summon assistance. The patient activates with the push of a button, and an alert is generated. That alert could go to a fixed station, or conveyed to a mobile solution, such as the Ascom Myco handset.

When a patient needs to summon a nurse, it could be for an acute medical issue. Implementing a reliable nurse call solution is vita to the wellbeing of patients in your care.

Data breaches in hospitals make national news, risking not only patient safety, but the reputation of the hospital itself. This is why data security is integral to communication technologies in the healthcare sector.

Ikonix Technology handles this in a variety of ways:

• In Ikonix Connect, data is encrypted on the handset and on the server, and transmitted through a secure, private connection. This has been tested by independent security experts to ensure robust privacy controls.
• In Ikonix Messenger, data is stored encrypted either with a reputable cloud infrastructure partner, or on the hospital’s own secure servers. Any connection such as to the Electronic Medical Record is also encrypted.
• For paging, we have also developed an innovative new way of encrypting these signals. Where many hospitals and health services still use unencrypted services, we can deploy a system resistant to prying eyes.

The Ikonix Unified Messaging Suite, or its components, have been deployed across more than 40 hospitals in Australia. Our private paging networks cover all of metro Sydney (HIRPN) and Adelaide (HPS), as well as throughout the Northern Territory. We also manage communication solutions for emergency response and in the mining sector.

You can find discussion of past deployments in our case studies.

Medical information is subject to rigorous compliance regimes due to its inherent sensitivities. This is why Ikonix Technology hosts in your choice of two secure methods: on premises deployments to your own controlled infrastructure, or to cloud providers utilising onshore data centres, such as AWS. This ensures data never leaves Australia.

It is also held in an AES-256 encrypted state, accessible only by specified personnel, achieving unparalleled security assurance.

Hospitals need to operate 24-7. This inevitably means there will be personnel gaps, because not every role is staffed in person at all times. Clinicians might go home for the day, but stay on-call, ready to return if necessary. They might also be on-call for one hospital in a district, while working from another.

Inside Ikonix Connect, personnel can be assigned an on-call role, so their colleagues can identify who is available to provide their consultation expertise. Roles and their shifts can be handed between people throughout the day, to ensure a given specialty has people ready to assist for the good of their patients.

Many different and disparate systems can be connected through Ikonix Messenger, our Message Integration Engine. We have more than 90 systems for which we have already developed the integration, so the fastest solution will be if it’s one of those.

If your system is software, check if it has an available Application Programming Interface, better known by its acronym, API. This is a piece of software that allows us to communicate between platforms.

For hardware solutions, we might need more information about its design.

In either case, the best answer is to simply contact us, so we can discuss what you are looking to achieve, in greater depth.