MEDICAL DATA SYSTEMS serves as a supportive member of the NICU team of physicians, nurses and other healthcare professionals, as they care for premature babies and a wide variety of critically ill newborns.
By working closely with this team, MDS has created systems that minimize the time and effort of data capture, yet maximizes the type and depth of clinical reports and accurate analyses.
MDS upholds, as a high priority, the ability to have user-defined analytical functions that contribute to the care of each patient, as well as contributing to quality improvement and patient safety for all of the infants cared for in the hospital’s NICU or Neonatal Follow-up Program.
Standards
The MEDICAL DATA SYSTEMS meets the objectives for patient record systems of the Institute of Medicine including:
- Support patient care and improve its quality
- Enhance the productivity of healthcare professionals and reduce administrative costs
- Support clinical and health services research
- Accommodate future developments in health care technology, policy management, and finance
- Mechanisms in place to ensure patient data confidentiality
The NIS™ is HL7 compatible and HIPAA compliant. MDS has years of experience in aggregating patient data from multiple NICU’s with maintenance of complete patient and institutional confidentiality.
Current Directions
The extensive information contained within the NIS™ provides a rich resource of data with which analytical queries can be performed on each patient on a concurrent basis. The development of this capacity provides a valuable clinical decision support system, as well as patient-specific alerts and quality care reminders. This real-time use of the query functions can be enhanced by links to relevant evidence-based reviews and other clinical information resources.
Concurrent data analysis gives real-time insights to the appearance of adverse events, as well as care patterns that show potential value to the patients. Benchmarking can be performed within each institution or as part of a collaborative, confidential, data acquisition and analysis program.
Anne Peckham
Anne Peckham founded MEDICAL DATA SYSTEMS in 1985 and currently serves as its Chief Executive Officer.
Peckham saw the need for a more efficient method of recording and analyzing the complex clinical information involved with care of critically ill newborns after a diverse career in nursing that included serving in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and in Clinical Research for the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
In 1985, Peckham founded MEDICAL DATA SYSTEMS and designed, and brought to market, the first ever PC-based computerized clinical database management system for Neonatology which spans the maternal and perinatal history through infant transport, NICU stay, discharge planning and Neonatal Follow-up.
Anne Peckham led the path for the integration of the MDS software solutions with hospital electronic records through the use of HL7 messages. She established the National Neonatal Database for multi-hospital comparisons and bench marking. Peckham led the way for data integration from MDS systems to multiple regional, state and national repositories such as the Vermont-Oxford Network and the New York Department of Health.
In 1997, Peckham earned a Masters in Business Administration from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Her experience in neonatal nursing and clinical research combined with her education, entrepreneurial agility and leadership skills have taken the MDS flagship product - the Neonatal Information System™ - from the DOS environment of 1985 to the most cutting-edge platforms of today's technology.
Steve Durfee
Steve Durfee, BA, MS has served as Vice President for Innovation and Development; fostering productive relationships with clinical leaders nationwide for over 15 years. Durfee works closely with neonatologists, nurses and hospital technologists to incorporate innovative features into the Neonatal Information System™ - turning clinical information requirements into ground-breaking product enhancements and solutions.
Bryan Feddish
Bryan Feddish has served as Chief Systems Architect for over 15 years at MDS and as senior software engineer for 5 years prior. Bryan Feddish's expert use of state-of-the-art technology to create product innovations and customized support is a key factor in the success of the Neonatal Information System™. Feddish leadership has taken the NIS™ from the DOS environment through Visual Basic and SQL platform and into .NET.
Robert Gallagher
Robert Gallagher BS, MS was instrumental in the creation of the Neonatal Information System™ and was the driving force behind the extraordinary analytical capabilities of the system, which have become the hallmark of the NIS™. For 20 years, Bob Gallagher was the Chief Operating Officer of MDS and now serves as a consultant and analytical advisor.
Clinical Information Solutions for Neonatology from Medical Data Systems
Since 1985, MEDICAL DATA SYSTEMS has worked closely with neonatologists, nurses, hospital administrators and IT personnel in hundreds of newborn intensive care units to develop innovative solutions for the management of complex clinical data for well and critically ill newborns and high-risk infant follow-up.
Neonatal Information System™ & NIS™ High-Risk Infant Follow-up Application
Accurate, efficient and affordable solutions for accessing your patient’s information in real-time.
The NIS™ provides a sophisticated and robust system for data queries and analytical functions. This real-time statistical capability facilitates -
- Safety
- Patient Care Decision Support
- Quality indexing
- Clinical Research
The NIS™ data is structured for export to state, regional and national clinical performance benchmarking repositories.
The Neonatal Information System™ can be used not only as a standalone data management system within the NICU and High-Risk Infant Follow-up Clinic; it can also be interfaced with the hospital-wide Electronic Medical Record to become part of the hospital's complete information management solution for neonatology.
Innovations from MEDICAL DATA SYSTEMS allows for real-time information that is immediately accessible for a variety of uses specific to Neonatology while melding with the changing IT solutions of the hospital.