News | March 4, 2010

Fujitsu Self-Service Patient Kiosk Helps Reduce Patient Stress, Lower Administrative Costs

HIMSS 2010 Fujitsu(http://solutions.us.fujitsu.com ) recently announced the Fujitsu Med-Serv(TM) 50 patient registration kiosk, an open hardware platform that lets the healthcare industry's innovative ISVs provide new applications to reduce patient stress and cut healthcare administrative costs. With the Fujitsu Med-Serv 50 kiosk, applications can be developed to ease and speed up the process for patient check-in. In addition, other applications for easily filling out satisfaction surveys, paying outstanding balances or co- pay fees can be supported. In order to eliminate fraud, another optional feature, the Fujitsu PalmSecure(TM) palm vein biometric reader, can be deployed to authenticate the patient. Self-service kiosks allow healthcare providers to increase patient satisfaction while reducing administrative staff in favor of additional medical staff.

News Highlights

  • The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) includes $17.2 billion in incentives, via Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement systems, to assist providers in adopting electronic health records (EHRs). The shift to EHRs will enable organizations to launch patient self-service initiatives -- such as deploying Med-Serv 50 kiosks -- as a way to lower operational costs and improve the patient experience.
  • The Med-Serv 50 platform offers several features and options that distinguish it from the competition, including a large 19-inch display, Fujitsu PalmSecure biometric technology, integrated camera and patient proximity mat.
  • The Med-Serv 50 hardware platform has been available for more than a year as the hardware foundation for the Allscripts Patient Kiosk(TM). Allscripts Patient Kiosk solves a common patient complaint - the seemingly endless stream of paperwork they must fill out every time they register for an appointment. Allscripts Patient Kiosk eliminates this frustration while helping physician practices reduce the costs and overhead associated with traditional patient check-in. Through integration with Allscripts Electronic Health Records, Patient Kiosk helps patients take control of their own healthcare with a dashboard view of all their personal information, including a complete health maintenance plan.
  • To develop this highly reliable, free-standing patient registration hardware platform, Fujitsu leveraged years of experience in delivering industry-leading retail self-service solutions, such as Fujitsu ticketing kiosks for the two largest theatre chains in the United States.
  • The Fujitsu self-service kiosk is a key element of the end-to-end healthcare solutions provided by Fujitsu. For example, new Fujitsu datacenter options for healthcare organizations include cloud computing, managed data center services and hosted offshoresolutions based on award-winning Fujitsu PRIMERGY(R) servers, and ETERNUS(R) storage and virtualization systems. For organizations needing specialized applications not supplied by an ISV, Fujitsu can develop custom software solutions.
  • See Fujitsu healthcare solutions in action at the HIMSS Conference and Exhibition in Atlanta, March 1-4, at the Georgia World Congress Center in booth 5232. Fujitsu will demonstrate how their offerings help healthcare organizations in North America reduce operating costs and deliver state-of-the-art patient experiences.

Related Links
Fujitsu Healthcare Overview
Fujitsu Med-Serv 50
Quotes

Glen Tullman, Chief Executive Officer, Allscripts: "Patients want to remove the pain of completing paper forms during every visit and physician practices want to find better, faster, more effective ways to complete accurate patient registrations and collect co-pays. The Fujitsu MedServ kiosk provides the perfect hardware for our kiosk solution, which is being used today by clients like George Washington University Medical Faculty Associates in Washington D.C. to deliver a superior patient experience and a solid return on investment."

Steve Sybert, Industry Vice President for Healthcare and Life Sciences, Fujitsu America: "The key to a successful self-service kiosk initiative in the healthcare industry is providing a streamlined and user-friendly patient and care provider experience. Fujitsu accomplishes this by matching the industry's best software applications with a highly reliable, highly flexible hardware platform. Fujitsu has a long track record of providing extremely successful self-service solutions, enabling us to deliver an advanced healthcare system with features other vendors can't match."

John Lovelock, Research Vice President, Gartner: "Under the US ARRA of 2009, eligible providers and hospitals seeking incentive payments for using EHRs must meet a series of increasingly challenging requirements for patient engagement. The expanding use of PHRs has the potential to bolster the clinical self-service kiosks market and improve its long term market potential."

SOURCE: Fujitsu