Case Studies
Covidien: Port a leading Hospital Information System for US hospitals to a new platform
Covidien's mobile patient charting system, commonly used in many US hospitals, lets healthcare professionals take in patient information at the bedside using a hand-held charting device. Since charting is done at the point of care, healthcare professionals can record details that might be forgotten or skipped. Another key component of the system is a tool that lets hospital managers re-allocate staff when demand changes. Managers can view information from each charting device from a central location so that they always know where more resources are needed.
With thousands of users, our client had a lot at stake in choosing a partner to port their HIS system to port to the upcoming Windows Vista operating system. They needed to find someone to do the job on time and on budget—with no room for error.
When they saw Macadamian's combination of porting experience and healthcare device development expertise, they chose Macadamian. Our plan included thorough testing of important risk areas for Vista, where errors can creep in, including:
- Access rights and permissions with the new Vista User Account Control (accessing restricted folders and restricted parts of the registry)
- Vista's enhanced security measures for launching external executables
- Dealing with new Microsoft APIs for sleep, hibernate and shutdown
By partnering with Macadamian for the HIS port, Covidien freed up their internal development resources to concentrate on the next version of their system. They also accessed Macadamian's prior porting experience to avoid running into surprise roadblocks along the way to a successful application.
