St Jude Medical announced on 7 April, 2009 that the Merlin.net patient care network (PCN) has received a 2009 Medical Design Excellence Award. Merlin.net PCN is a secure, Internet-based remote care system for patients with implanted medical devices.
This remote care system gathers and stores data from the implant procedure, in clinic follow-up visits and from both patient-initiated and automatic remote follow-up and monitoring transmissions from the patient’s home. This information gives physicians better and more immediate access to information to help them manage their patients’ devices.
The Medical Design Excellence Awards competition is organised and presented by Canon Communications LLC and is the only awards program that exclusively recognises contributions and advances in the design of medical products. Entries are evaluated on the basis of their design and engineering features, including innovative use of materials, user-related functions that improve healthcare delivery and change traditional medical attitudes of practices, features that provide enhanced benefits to the patient, and the ability of the product development team to overcome design and engineering challenges so that the product meets its clinical objectives.
A comprehensive review of the entries was performed by an impartial, multidisciplinary panel of third-party jurors with expertise in biomedical engineering, human factors, industrial design, medicine and diagnostics.
The 2009 Medical Design Excellence Award winners will be honored at a ceremony during the Medical Design & Manufacturing East Conference and Exposition, 9-11 June, at New York City’s Jacob K Javits Convention Center, USA.
Merlin.net PCN organises the information captured and recorded by implantable cardiac devices for fast analysis and easy review and allows data to be sent directly to a clinic’s or a hospital’s Electronic Health Records system so the data is included in the patient’s comprehensive personal health record.
With rapid access to patient information through the secure Merlin.net PCN website, physicians can remotely monitor and assess patient device data and determine the level of care needed. Alert notification delivery times can be customised to fit in with physician determined clinic hours, including any after-hours processes the clinic might provide.
Merlin.net PCN supports the Current RF implantable cardioverter defibrillators and Promote RF cardiac resynchronisation therapy defibrillator family of devices and all currently marketed Atlas ICD and Epic CRT-D device families in the USA.
