Mark St. John, administrative director for technology services, said that MaineGeneral is consolidating much of its IT infrastructure into a 1,400-square-foot data center in the new facility, and also has built a distributed antenna system into the facility to help ensure reliable wireless coverage.

Patient-facing technology includes a real-time location system from Traverse City, Mich.-based Versus Technology, with integration of devices from a variety of other vendors.

A Responder 5 nurse call system, provided by Rauland-Borg, Mount Prospect, Ill., is integrated with the RTLS, as is Vocera wireless communications hardware, St. John said. With the help of Philips Intellispace Event Manager software, nurse calls and in-room patient monitors are tied to the Vocera "badge" that each nurse wears. When an alarm sounds, the nurse can go to the patient's room or simply make a call from the wireless communications badge, St. John said.

This setup allowed MaineGeneral to replace its pagers within the hospital, though the organization still does use the antiquated technology because its service area across mostly rural Kennebec County is sparsely populated, and wireless broadband coverage is spotty, according to St. John.

Each inpatient room has a 44-inch HDTV, and TeleHealth Services, of Raleigh, N.C., is supplying patient education services over the in-house cable system, St. John said. Clinicians can turn the screen on their in-room computers to show videos as well.

For staff, about 30 meeting rooms, including a large education center, have been outfitted with videoconferencing equipment to communicate with other MaineGeneral facilities. So far, the links have mostly been used for meetings, though St. John expects to see the organization employ the technology for medical and nursing education.

"I think it's not as widely used as it's going to be in a year," St. John said.

[See also: Maine aims to lead on telehealth front]