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Major capital facilities construction project are currently underway at two Fraser Health Authority (FHA) hospital sites: the ‘Health Care Pavilion’ at Burnaby Hospital (BH); and the ‘Jim Pattison Acute Care Tower’ (JPACT) at Royal Columbian Hospital (RCH). Target completion is set for mid-2025 and late-2025, respectively.
Both construction projects will provide for much larger spaces for clinical service delivery, relative to what is currently available. While these larger spaces will improve clinical services in many ways, they also introduce one key drawback which is that they make it much more difficult for clinical staff to communicate with each other and to exchange information. This has the potential to adversely affect the delivery of safe and effective clinical care.
‘Unified Clinical Communications’ (UCC) technologies are planned to mitigate this risk. For background, UCC is a term used in Fraser Health to refer to a family of commercial communications technologies designed to facilitate communications in clinical settings. An important example of a technology that falls under the UCC umbrella is ‘Vocera’.
At present, Vocera has been deployed to several clinical departments at RCH and will be extended to the JPACT so that it is broadly available across the site on opening day. At BH, Vocera has so far been deployed to one clinical department at BH, but plans are being developed to expand it to other departments in support of the construction project. Expansion of Vocera systems at BH and RCH is a key objective of this SOW.
Project Overview
UCC projects are technically complex and therefore challenging to implement.
Much of this complexity results from the wide-ranging assortment of technical infrastructure components needed to support even basic UCC use cases, extending from data center-based servers and storage, to wired and wireless networks, to application software, and to the end use devices themselves.
For UCC applications to provide the quality of service necessary, each component must be configured to operate in an optimal fashion – both by itself, and with its neighboring components in the overall UCC technical environment. Achieving an optimal configuration is a complex challenge on its own.
As well, complexity also emerges when UCC systems are integrated with other technical environments, as described in the following two examples:
Nurse Call Integration: Interoperability with the Nurse Call system will contribute to enhanced clinical workflow by, for example, enabling the ability to route patient calls for assistance to the clinical staff member assigned to that patient
2. Clinical Patient Monitors: Interoperability with clinical patient monitors will enable the ability to alert clinical staff about adverse patient events while they are not at the bedside.
This Statement of Work (SOW) requests the services of a ‘Technical Solution Lead’ to lead the technical work for UCC projects at RCH and BH. These services will extend across the full project lifecycle, extending from solution design, to implementation, to testing, optimization and deployment.
The scope will involve both the activities needed to enable basic UCC functionality – deployment and optimization of Vocera in a specific clinical department, for example – as well as interoperability extensions to other systems, such as the Nurse Call system described above.
Note that this Statement of Work is not specifically limited to the UCC projects described above. In order to achieve full efficiency and utilization, the scope of this engagement may be extended to other UCC-related projects as well as to projects that do not fall under the UCC umbrella.
Also note that while this Statement of Work primarily involves redevelopment projects at BH and RCH, the engagement may be extended to other initiatives in FHA such as, for example, the new hospital being constructed in Surrey, informally referred to as the ‘New Surrey Hospital and BC Cancer Center’ (NSHBCCC).
Services Required:
Assume the ‘Technical Lead’ role for UCC projects at BH and RCH. This role is further described as follows:
Deliverables
This is a full-time engagement. Additional projects or tasks may be assigned to gain full utilization of the consultant.
Mandatory:
TECHNICAL SOLUTION LEAD - UNIFIED CLINICAL COMMUNICATIONS
Burnaby, BCProject Description:
BackgroundMajor capital facilities construction project are currently underway at two Fraser Health Authority (FHA) hospital sites: the ‘Health Care Pavilion’ at Burnaby Hospital (BH); and the ‘Jim Pattison Acute Care Tower’ (JPACT) at Royal Columbian Hospital (RCH). Target completion is set for mid-2025 and late-2025, respectively.
Both construction projects will provide for much larger spaces for clinical service delivery, relative to what is currently available. While these larger spaces will improve clinical services in many ways, they also introduce one key drawback which is that they make it much more difficult for clinical staff to communicate with each other and to exchange information. This has the potential to adversely affect the delivery of safe and effective clinical care.
‘Unified Clinical Communications’ (UCC) technologies are planned to mitigate this risk. For background, UCC is a term used in Fraser Health to refer to a family of commercial communications technologies designed to facilitate communications in clinical settings. An important example of a technology that falls under the UCC umbrella is ‘Vocera’.
At present, Vocera has been deployed to several clinical departments at RCH and will be extended to the JPACT so that it is broadly available across the site on opening day. At BH, Vocera has so far been deployed to one clinical department at BH, but plans are being developed to expand it to other departments in support of the construction project. Expansion of Vocera systems at BH and RCH is a key objective of this SOW.
Project Overview
UCC projects are technically complex and therefore challenging to implement.
Much of this complexity results from the wide-ranging assortment of technical infrastructure components needed to support even basic UCC use cases, extending from data center-based servers and storage, to wired and wireless networks, to application software, and to the end use devices themselves.
For UCC applications to provide the quality of service necessary, each component must be configured to operate in an optimal fashion – both by itself, and with its neighboring components in the overall UCC technical environment. Achieving an optimal configuration is a complex challenge on its own.
As well, complexity also emerges when UCC systems are integrated with other technical environments, as described in the following two examples:
Nurse Call Integration: Interoperability with the Nurse Call system will contribute to enhanced clinical workflow by, for example, enabling the ability to route patient calls for assistance to the clinical staff member assigned to that patient
2. Clinical Patient Monitors: Interoperability with clinical patient monitors will enable the ability to alert clinical staff about adverse patient events while they are not at the bedside.
This Statement of Work (SOW) requests the services of a ‘Technical Solution Lead’ to lead the technical work for UCC projects at RCH and BH. These services will extend across the full project lifecycle, extending from solution design, to implementation, to testing, optimization and deployment.
The scope will involve both the activities needed to enable basic UCC functionality – deployment and optimization of Vocera in a specific clinical department, for example – as well as interoperability extensions to other systems, such as the Nurse Call system described above.
Note that this Statement of Work is not specifically limited to the UCC projects described above. In order to achieve full efficiency and utilization, the scope of this engagement may be extended to other UCC-related projects as well as to projects that do not fall under the UCC umbrella.
Also note that while this Statement of Work primarily involves redevelopment projects at BH and RCH, the engagement may be extended to other initiatives in FHA such as, for example, the new hospital being constructed in Surrey, informally referred to as the ‘New Surrey Hospital and BC Cancer Center’ (NSHBCCC).
Services Required:
Assume the ‘Technical Lead’ role for UCC projects at BH and RCH. This role is further described as follows:
- Serve as the point of contact for technical matters related to the UCC project.
- Responsibility to extend across the full project lifecycle including, but not limited to:
- Technical Design
- Technology deployment and optimization.
- Testing
- ‘Go-Live’ cutover.
- Transition to operations.
- Responsibility to extend across a broad range of technical subject areas including, but not limited to:
- Functional requirements
- Non-functional requirements
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- ‘High-Level’ and ‘Low-Level’ technical design
- Infrastructure technical requirements, including:
- Servers
- PBX
- LANs
- WLANS
- WANs
- QoS
- Campus Sites
- Cybersecurity requirements
- Test and validation:
- Functional and Non-Functional
- System load testing (if required)
- Go-Live cutover and roll back planning
- Responsibility for IT change management, to include documentation of required changes, reviews and submissions. IT change management activities must be done in a timely fashion, so that approval can be achieved 3-4 weeks prior to required cutover dates. Responsible for ensuring that changes made to the UCC environment have minimal change impact to clinical users.
- Responsibility for coordination and collaboration with project stakeholders, to include:
- Non-technical resources assigned to the project, such as the FHA application specialists responsible for administering the UCC environment.
- Technical support teams to include, as examples: PHSA Tech Services.
- Digital Patient and Provider Experience team supporting the Vocera & Connexall platforms.
- FHA departments, such as Facilities Management and Biomedical Engineering.
- Commercial product suppliers, such as Vocera/Stryker, Connexall, Rauland, and Masimo.
- Establish Service Level Agreements with FHA Digital Patient and Provider Experience operational support team that will provide for ongoing operational support. This will include definition and implementation of several common operational processes, including:
- Technical and end-user helpline support.
- Maintenance of technical infrastructure
- Maintain compliance with established Fraser Health technical standards for UCC systems.
- Ensure readiness of wireless networks to support UCC, including:
- Coordinate wireless site surveys to assess wireless coverage for UCC devices.
- Assess compliance with technical requirements for Vocera grade wireless networks and to lead resolution of deficiencies. This includes, for example, ensuring that Vocera quality of service (QOS) requirements are met.
- Coordinate tests to verify compliance with Non-Functional requirements (NFRs).
- Plan and coordinate technical training, to include Digital Patient and Provider Experience staff, as required.
- Coordinate technical ‘Go-Live’ planning
- Detailed go live cutover and roll back plans
- Complex technical cutovers that include charges to production telecom and Vocera wireless communications platform
Deliverables
- ‘High-Level’ UCC design document, to define technical architecture.
- ‘Low-Level’ UCC design document, to include:
- Servers
- Telecom
- LAN
- WAN
- QoS
- Wi-Fi
- Integrations
- Applications
- Non-Functional Requirements (NFR):
- Requirements document
- Test plan document
- Test results document
- Technical ‘Go-Live’ plan
- Configuration requirements technical documentation including, but not limited to:
- Call flow diagrams
- Configuration tables describing users, call groups etc.
- ‘As-built’ documentation
- Operational readiness plan
- Operation technical handover documentation
- Operational Readiness Guides
- Operational SLA
- Operational recommendations e.g., Wi-Fi changes possible impact on Vocera
- Quick refence guides
This is a full-time engagement. Additional projects or tasks may be assigned to gain full utilization of the consultant.
- Minimum 5 years’ experience on IT infrastructure projects, with specific experience with:
- Wireless networking.
- Voice communications systems
- Experience with IT systems in an acute care environment.
- Experience with full life-cycle deployment of complex IT solutions.
- Experience with UCC solutions, such as Vocera.
- Experience with UCC integrations, with focus on:
- Nurse Call systems
- Clinical patient monitors
- Experience managing ‘Go-Lives’ in a complex environment.