Ricoh Adds Healthcare Solutions

LAS VEGAS, Feb. 24, 2016 /PRNewswire/ — (HIMSS 2016, Booth #7599) — Ricoh Americas Corporation today announced Ricoh Electronic Data Exchange (Ricoh EDE), a subscription based service that helps improve the overall patient experience by transferring protected data, including clinical photography and images, to an intended destination. This workflow solution enables healthcare facilities to capture, store and manage protected information, whether structured or unstructured, within an Electronic Health Record (EHR) or enterprise content management (ECM) system. Ricoh EDE, helps providers eliminate tedious manual image transfers, image identification and human error – ultimately boosting overall accuracy, efficiency and productivity. 

Within the Acute Care market, facilities now have a need to implement new and emerging protocols, integrate various disparate systems and architectures, and uncover new ways to excel in today’s changing business and regulatory environment. Ricoh EDE helps facilities address these needs. The capturing of the information can begin at a multifunction product (MFP), cameras used in clinical areas such as wound care and dermatology, or even an interactive whiteboard. Traditionally, it was required to manually transfer the data captured via these devices and then store in a desired location. Yet with Ricoh EDE, this transfer process is managed through Ricoh’s workflow server and delivered to an EHR and/or ECM based on the direction of the physician or administrator validating the data.

“Helping facilities transform the way they work by improving efficiencies and boosting secure workflow capabilities are top priorities for our team – and the development of Ricoh Electronic Data Exchange is a direct result of this goal,” said Ron Nielson, Vice President, Healthcare, Ricoh Americas Corporation. “We often see healthcare organizations taking disconnected approaches to capturing content. Ricoh EDE brings a new level of efficiency while speeding up the file transport process for documents and images alike, helping to find even more ways to make information work better for providers and their patients.” 

According to a recent IDC Health Insights study commissioned by Ricoh, only 10 percent of healthcare organizations enable document capture using cameras on smartphones and tablets.  Added to this, more than 80 percent of hospitals report opportunities to more tightly integrate workflows. Ricoh EDE helps providers address these challenges from start-to-finish, connecting the needed workflow components to help ensure a more efficient flow of information.

Ricoh also announced the release of its Asset Lifecycle Management for Healthcare offering, a solution that helps hospitals simplify the management of print and other IT managed devices, while helping identify compliance risks. This new solution leverages Information-as-a-Service offerings from Symphion, Inc. designed for Print, IT and Compliance. By utilizing Asset Lifecycle Management for Healthcare’s automated scanning, device discovery, and predictive analytics, IT management can make more informed decisions  that can help reduce device, labor and other IT costs, while at the same time manage the risks of ever evolving infrastructure.

“At its core, the healthcare industry serves to protect the most vulnerable from harm,” said Ron Nielson, Vice President, Healthcare, Ricoh Americas Corporation. “For Ricoh this means protecting patients’ private information and helping to ensure that our customers have security safeguards in place to meet HIPAA and HITECH regulations. With our Asset Lifecycle Management for Healthcare, hospitals are now equipped with enterprise-wide, constantly updated information about their hardware and software assets to make quick and accurate decisions to keep their technology in good health.” 

Hospitals are challenged with improving efficiencies and reducing costs while striving to comply with federal mandates associated with HIPAA compliance and meaningful use of Electronic Health Records (EHRs). The ability to seamlessly capture, transform and manage patient and business data across departments with secure IT ecosystems can improve care coordination and clinical processes, driving business efficiencies, profitability and meaningful use. In fact, a recent IDC study commissioned by Ricoh showed that capturing, transforming and managing data has a positive impact on hospitals’ revenue (66.7%) and profitability (58.6%). Ricoh’s Asset Lifecycle Management for Healthcare improves hospitals’ information mobility by enabling their IT departments to identify critical asset information and make faster, more informed IT, compliance and print-related decisions.

Ricoh’s Asset Lifecycle Management for Healthcare benefits hospitals with new capabilities, including:

• Software toolset and agentless asset scanning that identifies and reports on hardware and software issues on a hospital’s network, reducing time required to manually track and confirm information and improving transparency for decision-makers.
• A dedicated “concierge team” of experts who deliver the expertise, services and support for the term of the service as an extension of the provider’s team, through regular systematic analyzed reporting,  on demand reporting and automated monitoring and alerts that allow providers to adapt to challenges, as they arise, and ongoing needs.
• A systematic, enterprise-wide assessment process that collects and analyzes information about print assets and service, IT inventories, configurations and operations and vulnerabilities in a Windows fleet to help reduce system downtime that could potentially impact patients’ quality of care.
• A comprehensive, three-pillar approach comprising IT, compliance and print information to help ensure nothing in these key areas falls through the cracks.
• Streamlined and automated reporting on software titles to help ensure only software that is needed and being used is ordered or gets a license extension, which can help reduce compliance risk and overall IT spending for the hospital.
• Reporting on and management of print devices and analysis of print costs, usage and uptime trends to help optimize print processes and reduce costs.
• Automatic capture of network asset information to reduce manual tasks.