News | October 15, 2014

Douglas & Nancy Barnhart Cancer Center Uses New Software to Manage Risk for Patients With Cardiac Devices

The innovative technology platform for managing data from cardiac devices allows radiation oncologists to monitor for malfunction during radiation therapy

October 15, 2014 — The Geneva Healthcare Suite has been proven effective by clinicians at the Douglas & Nancy Barnhart Cancer Center at Sharp Chula Vista Medical Center in managing risk for patients with cardiac devices undergoing radiation therapy. The Barnhart Cancer Center presented the protocol “Risk Management for Lung Cancer Radiation Therapy and Cardiac Implantable Electronic Devices (CIEDs)” at the International Congress for Lung Cancer in August 2014.

“Therapeutic radiation for cancer can adversely affect cardiac device function even at relatively low scatter doses of radiation, putting the patient at risk,” said Siavash Jabbari, M.D., a radiation oncologist affiliated with the Barnhart Cancer Center who oversaw the use of the Geneva Healthcare Suite. “Guidelines exist for the assessment and management of these risks, but current clinical solutions are impractical and resource intensive. Before the Geneva Healthcare Suite we had to rely on local representatives from each device manufacturer to come in to interrogate the device. Now we have instant access to the information that helps us understand the status of the device.”

The Geneva Healthcare Suite has already been proven to cut emergency room wait times by an average of 92 minutes in a recent study published in the Academic Emergency Medicine Journal. The UCSD and Sharp Chula Vista Emergency Departments are using the suite to access data from incoming patients’ implanted cardiac devices such as pacemakers or defibrillators.

“We use the Geneva Healthcare Suite when patients with cardiac devices present at the emergency room because the platform organizes and presents the device data in a very intuitive dashboard that is consistent across all devices and immediately makes critical information available to all our clinicians, anytime and anywhere. We save time by making this information available immediately, which allows us to make faster decisions in the ER,” said Christina Ballejos, Ph.D., RN, CNS, Sharp Chula Vista. “It made sense to bring this technology to the Barnhart Cancer Center since patients with devices are also presenting for radiation treatments.”

The Geneva Healthcare Suite makes critical cardiac device data more accessible and available at the point of care. The suite organizes health data from multiple device sources on an intuitive dashboard that makes life-saving information available immediately to all clinicians.

For more information: genevahealthcare.com


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