Cognitive Medical Systems, the emerging specialist in standards-based, clinical decision support software solutions for healthcare organizations, will implement a wireless clinical decision support platform for the Perinatal Quality Collaborate of North Carolina (PQCNC).

The initiative will leverage Cognitive’s analytics platform along with handheld devices to help improve the care of mothers and infants admitted to labor and delivery as well as the neonatal intensive care units of participating hospitals.

“PQCNC is a collaborative organization composed of a wide array of stakeholders in perinatal care from across the state to make North Carolina the best place to be born,” said Martin McCaffrey, M.D., Director of PQCNC. “PQCNC’s partnership with Cognitive Medical Systems offers us the opportunity to transform quality improvement science in this area.”

PQCNC targets critical areas of hospital- based perinatal healthcare. The collaborative includes maternal and newborn care providers of all types in addition to families, Blue Cross/Blue Shield North Carolina, the Division for Medical Assistance (North Carolina Medicaid), the North Carolina Department of Public Health, hospital administrators and state legislators. PQCNC has conducted initiatives that have reduced elective deliveries less than 39 weeks in 40 hospitals across North Carolina by 43 percent and decreased catheter associated blood stream infections in 13 neonatal intensive care units by 75 percent.

Building upon this success, PQCNC and Cognitive Medical Systems will introduce flexible technology to the bedside that can be applied across multiple facilities to allow real-time data entry and decision making by healthcare providers. It is anticipated that the introduction of real time quality improvement capability will increase center participation and reduce costs associated with conducting, adhering and achieving the goals set forth in the program’s quality improvement projects.

The core functionality of the system to be employed is Cognitive Medical Systems’ Decision Support Framework (DSF) that will be delivered to neonatal caregivers via a series of applications to handheld wireless devices. The technology will analyze the data collected at the point-of-care to determine care recommendations, alerts and notifications as appropriate for a particular patient. For example, DSF will determine who should be notified, how they should be notified and when escalation to an alternative recipient is necessary.

“We’re seeking to solve four key issues in neonatal patient care,” said Mary Lacroix, CEO of Cognitive Medical Systems. “First, we will alleviate the burdensome manual process that currently exists. We also want to eliminate the delay in analyzing collected data that is crucial to making the right decision at the right moment. Third, we seek to limit the amount of paper reports and labor-intensive personal communications that must be done to analyze patient information once it’s received. Lastly, we are passionate about making the system such that families can be involved in the process. When we’re done, we will make a significant and positive impact on these fragile babies who are struggling in their first weeks of life.”

The pilot program is expected to commence in July 2012 and last through 2013.

About Cognitive Medical Systems, Inc.

Headquartered in San Diego, Cognitive Medical Systems is a HUBZone certified, woman-owned, service-disabled veteran, small business that specializes in standards-based, advanced concept engineering solutions for clinical workflow, decision support and data modeling projects. The company’s domain and field expertise in designing, implementing and integrating medical Service Oriented Architectures enables it to develop optimized solutions to complex problems for a wide range of organizations. For more information, contact www.cognitivemedicine.com.