TigerConnect is about to add a range of new capabilities to its clinical communication and collaboration platform following the acquisition of the healthcare middleware provider Critical Alert. This is the second major acquisition by the Santa Monica, CA-based HIPAA-compliant text messaging platform provider in 2020, following the acquisition of Call Scheduler in the fall.
Critical Alert is a cloud-native and mobile-first provider of enterprise-grade middleware for hospitals and health systems. The middleware products are used by hospitals to combine nurse call, alarm and event management, medical device interoperability, and clinical workflow analytics. In addition to the suite of middleware products, Critical Alert provides traditional nurse call hardware to more than 200 hospitals throughout North America.
The acquisition will see the suite of middleware products incorporated into the TigerConnect platform which will add a host of new capabilities and power a wide range of alert types and alarm management enhancements. The integration of the middleware is expected to be completed in Q1, 2021.
Critical Alert middleware seamlessly integrates clinical systems to transmit alarms, events, and values and provides virtualized nurse call that includes contextual patient data to allow nurses to prioritize requests. Through centralized answering of nurse call alerts and the management of workflows and assignments, noise and clinical interruptions are reduced and responsiveness is improved.
Real-time Location Systems (RTLS) integrations help to improve caregiver effectiveness and streamline workflows and enable real-time tracking of staff location and time spent on tasks. These integrations provide insights into resource planning, workflow effectiveness, and ongoing process improvement initiatives.
The integration of Critical Alert with TigerConnect will allow easy integrations with smart bed alarms for effective fall prevention and improved patient safety. If the safe bed configuration is compromised, alerts will be sent immediately to mobile devices allowing nurses to quickly respond.
Through an integration with the TigerFlow care team collaboration solution, alerts will be intelligently routed to the right caregivers, suppressing unnecessary noise and improving efficiency. The context provided with these alerts helps nurses to prioritize effectively. Critical Alert also brings advanced analytics that provide insights into patient behavior and help with the optimization of staff workload.
The incorporation of Critical Alert middleware into the TigerConnect platform provides greater value to customers and helps to ease the burden on nurses at a time when nurse burnout is incredibly common. The improvements that can be made to efficiency and effectiveness are likely to make a huge difference in hospitals, especially given the current chronic nurse shortages.
“We see the Critical Alert acquisition as highly strategic and a natural evolution of our already-robust collaboration platform,” said Brad Brooks, CEO and co-founder of TigerConnect. “For the hundreds of thousands of nurses that currently use TigerConnect, these new capabilities will deliver real-time, contextual information to their mobile device or desktop to allow them to work smarter, prioritize responses, and efficiently coordinate care, all within the same reliable TigerConnect platform they use every day for enterprise messaging.”
The acquisition will see Critical Alert CEO John Elms join the TigerConnect team as Chief Product Officer/ Elms will play a key role in integrating the two companies’ technologies and will guide future product offerings. The VP of Sales for Critical Alert, Wil Lukens, will also join the TigerConnect team and will assume the role of General Manager of Critical Alert’s traditional Nurse Call hardware unit, which will continue to operate under the same name as a standalone business unit.
“The timing of the deal and the fit of these two companies aligned perfectly,” said John Elms, CEO of Critical Alert. “Two best-in-class, highly complementary solutions coming together to solve some of the chronic challenges—alarm fatigue, response prioritization, resource optimization—that have driven nurse teams to the brink. Together, these unified technologies will make care professionals’ lives easier, not harder, and I couldn’t be more excited to lead the TigerConnect product organization into this next chapter.”
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