Everybody wants to make visiting and staying in a hospital as pleasant as possible. Taking care of people with serious illnesses requires many different skills so employing technology at the point of care brings many benefits to patients and caregivers.

Kidney disease and acute renal failure cause kidneys to lose their ability to filter and remove waste and extra fluid from the body. Hemodialysis is a process that uses a man-made semi-permeable membrane (dialyzer) to remove waste from the blood during treatment. Because treatments differ, hemodialysis can be applied temporarily during infection, or long term for cases of serious chronic malfunctioning. Patients can come frequently, twice a week, hours at a time, or every day in some cases. Blood must be artificially cleaned, but in many clinics during treatment, medical professionals have no access to patient records and data input can be time consuming and laborious.

To address these issues, a medical software company called E.M.A. has developed a highly reliable compact touch panel computer to integrate with their dialysis software solution for La Timone, a famous children’s hospital in France. Their goal was to develop:

• An all-in-one touch computer to integrate with their medical software
• The ability to link up with patient medical histories and labs
• An easy to maintain product that conforms to quality medical specification and certifications
• Industrial grade build quality
• Data input at point-of-care in order to insure hyper efficiency

E.M.A. (Engineering Medical Application) is a medical software company based in Aix En Provence, France with more than 20 years experience in the industry. They develop network and software solutions dedicated exclusively to the complete day-to-day management of a dialysis clinic. Their software optimizes the efficient use of each patient's medical record to improve quality and treatment—at point of care. E.M.A's solution can directly interface with hospital computer systems to exchange data and synchronize with medical labs for fast results. Care givers can directly input data such as drug doses and application times which are stored in each patient dossier. This ease of access gets the best out of each medical professional and saves valuable time.

Professor Michel Tsimaratos MD, PhD of AP-HM Children’s Hospital La Timone, Aix-Marseille University, France says, "E.M.A's Hemadialyse systems are used all the time in our Pediatric Nephrology unit. These devices are efficient in improving the quality of service provided to patients suffering from chronic renal failure. Physicians and nurses look forward to the next step that will allow paper free management of medical care”. With E.M.A's Hemadialyse systems, center managers and medical practitioners can treat patients more efficiently as well as save time—letting staff concentrate on clinical work and administration.

Hemadialyse is a dialysis system product developed by E.M.A. integrating Advantech's  UTC-W101 Intel® Atom™ based fanless 10.1" wide touch computer. The product, called HEMABOX is based on a customized UTC-W101, upon which their software is installed. HEMABOX retrieves each patient software medical record and dialysis monitoring data, and synchronizes and stores them securely with HEMADIALYSE which manages patient pathology records. One great advantage is that medical staff can view longer patient histories as all data is stored locally on the HEMABOX system.

Some of main advantages of using UTC-W101 are: Medical grade certification EN-60601, ISO 13485 and UL-60601 (essential for export to US and Canada), a 10.1" touch screen, low power consumption, elegant design and of course, reliability, based on 500 installations  since  November 2010. HEMABOX is an innovative all-in-one solution to meet the vast demand emerging from the medical market. Hot keys on the bezel provide instant function access, and the simple and elegant industrial design perfectly blends into medical environment. Another great benefit, highlighted by a survey done in Marseille Hospital, shows that every update done directly on the touchscreen saves 5 minutes per patient.  

Jacques-Olivier TCHENIO, General DIRECTOR and co-owner of E.M.A. said, "When we started working with Advantech we had a few other suppliers, however we really appreciated, the look and feel of their product, as well the quality of fabrication and easy maintenance. They were able to customize it for us and provide valuable after sales service, Advantech and EMA now have a healthy and a long term professional relationship."