Innovation for Pelvic Health

To many involved with the routine assessment of voiding and storage dysfunction, urodynamics involves the measurement of long-established parameters of bladder pressures and uroflow rates. Initially, voiding assessment was simply “eyeball” urodynamics. From those simple observations to the use of the hydrostatic water column, urodynamics moved from qualitative measurements to something more quantitative.

Every year, whether the subject is healthcare,  industry,  or personal lifestyle, you hear the famous phrase Do more with less. How is it possible to gain more out of something with fewer resources? In our everyday lives everything is becoming more expensive, and we see how we are getting less for the same money. When someone asks you to turn the tide and do more with less, you have got to think this request is completely unreasonable! Doing anything impacts the time, people, and efficiency that relate to productivity. Certainly we can try to improve patient processing to improve efficiency, but is it enough to demand more work to be done in less time or at less cost? Processes in patient care and management can do only so much, and once they are optimized, what is left to consider?

The U.S. federal government takes managing patient records for any element of healthcare very seriously. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 is the foundation of patient-information control, particularly—but not exclusively—when such information becomes as portable as it does in electronic form. Since the act was passed by Congress, several revisions and clarifications have been approved. Most important is the Standards for Privacy of Individually Identifiable Health Information (Privacy Rule, in short), the final rule of which was issued by the Department of Health and Human Services, and was put into effect on October 15, 2002.*

Many of us have heard of jumping on the bandwagon, an expression used to describe someone following a trend or movement.

At LABORIE, when we think about our quality goals or our customer-service initiatives, we want everyone in our company on the bandwagon, thinking along the same path or philosophy. When it comes to product technology, however, the technology plane instead of the bandwagon is much more appropriate.  After all, when you think of bandwagons, we conjure images of horse-drawn carriages and endless circling when under threat.  This is not at all what we at Laborie want to project.  The airplane is much more sophisticated and of course, it is the modern way to travel.