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Pocket Wins at Children's Mercy
Very soon Pocket will be hitting the road - literally - for use in small communities within a 200 mile radius of Kansas City, thanks to a forward thinking IT group at Children's Mercy Hospital. This sale resulted from a successful collaboration between Bill Coble from Nurture and the Telemedicine Department at Children's Mercy, who positioned Pocket as the platform for the RP-Xpress active patient monitoring and connection to diagnostic medical devices.
Children's Mercy Hospitals and Clinics, located in Kansas City, Mo., is one of the nation's top pediatric medical centers. Their mission is to provide the highest level of medical care, technology, services, equipment and facilities in promoting the health and well-being of children in the region, from birth through adolescence.
Initially, when the Telemedicine team at Children's conducted an online search for a mobile solution that met the needs of physicians rounding in the NICU/PICU, Pocket was a natural fit. Given that most of their physicians have adopted iPads for data entry, they wanted to streamline the process and make rounding easier. One of the key attributes that made Pocket most desirable was the ability for the unit to "docked", or held in place by the bracket on Pocket, allowing physicians to type freely on a Bluetooth keyboard, without having to hold the iPad. This type of use was very natural to the Telemedicine team.
Then the idea dawned on them. Pocket was also the answer for supporting the Intouch RP-Xpress units (small, remote presence devices) that are used in patient rooms and also transported around the clinical environment. It was after this revelation that the Telemedicine team contacted Bill Coble and asked for a sample that they could demo.
Bill immediately rushed a sample to Children's Mercy for a two week trial. It was during those two weeks that the Telemedicine team tested their idea. They found Pocket to be light and portable - so much so that it could be loaded into an SUV with the RP-Xpress travel kit and set up anywhere. They found that once onsite Pocket was extremely fluid and natural and easily maneuverable throughout the environment. In addition they loved that there was no onboard battery power installed on the unit. A Telemedicine team member shared that "the lack of onboard power makes this device even more marketable to folks like me because it's one less thing to fail on us".
When the time came to make the decision, it was the recommendation of the Telemedicine team to no-bid the project, and no competitors were brought in by Purchasing. IT had the final say, and they wanted Pocket.
Over the next year, Children's Mercy will be purchasing approximately 50 Pockets for both the obvious (iPad support for rounding NICU/PICU physicians) and the not so obvious (RP-Xpress support in small communities so that physicians can follow up with their patients and families) use.
This win highlights just how influential the IT audience can be in product purchases that support technology. Time spent understanding their point of view and sharing how our insights drive product solutions that solve for their specific needs can help provide a real, significant competitive advantage. Congratulations to Bill Coble on an impressive win!
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