| Patent application number | Description | Published |
| 20090212956 | DISTRIBUTED HEALTHCARE COMMUNICATION SYSTEM - A graphical audio station of a nurse call system is operable to permit a user to perform one or more of the following functions: establish a two-way voice communication link with another computer device in another patient and/or with a another computer device located in another staff work area and/or with a wireless communication device carried by caregiver and/or with a telephone of the healthcare facility; broadcast a voice page to a group of other selected computer devices; compose and send a text message to a portable device that is carried by a caregiver and that has wireless communication capability; browse web pages and/or view multimedia content, such as videos, hosted on servers of the healthcare facility and/or that are accessible via the Internet; view and/or acknowledge and/or answer and/or cancel alerts or nurse calls originating in a plurality of patient rooms. | 08-27-2009 |
| 20090217080 | DISTRIBUTED FAULT TOLERANT ARCHITECTURE FOR A HEALTHCARE COMMUNICATION SYSTEM - A healthcare communication system includes a first plurality of computer devices, such as patient stations, staff stations, and a master station, that are operable as a nurse call system. The first plurality of computer devices may have core nurse call functionality residing on an embedded computing platform. At least one of the first plurality of computer devices may have a graphical display screen. A second plurality of computer devices may be operable to provide the first plurality of computer devices with additional functionality via software plug-ins that are transmitted to the first plurality of computer devices. The first plurality of computer devices may be interconnected logically and/or physically in a tiered architecture arrangement to provide fault isolation among the tiers so that faults occurring in computer devices of one tier don't affect the operability of computer devices in other tiers and so that faults occurring in any of the second plurality of computer devices don't affect the core nurse call functionality of the first plurality of computer devices. | 08-27-2009 |
| 20110072583 | ASSOCIATION OF SUPPORT SURFACES AND BEDS - Systems, methods, beds, supports surfaces and machine readable medium for associating beds and support surface of a healthcare facility are disclosed. A surface association system for a healthcare facility may comprise a plurality of beds. The system may further comprise a computing device and a plurality of support surfaces to be placed upon beds of the plurality of beds. The computing device may associate a support surface of the plurality of support surfaces with a bed of the plurality of beds. The computing device may make the association based upon status data received from the plurality of beds and the plurality of support surfaces. The support surface and/or bed to be associated may initiate a surface association request. The computing device, in response to the surface association request, may request performance of one or more actions on the bed and/or support surface to be associated to identify the bed and/or support surface from the beds and support surfaces of the healthcare facility. | 03-31-2011 |