Adobe Success Story

Breeze permeates hospital operations
Founded in 1869, Children’s Hospital Boston is the nation’s leading pediatric medical center and the primary pediatric teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School. In addition to its 347 inpatient beds and comprehensive outpatient programs, Children’s Hospital houses the world’s largest research enterprise at a pediatric medical center. The hospital’s facilities consist of a large medical complex, a smaller hospital located about 30 miles outside of Boston, and several satellite centers.

From cafeteria workers to surgeons, all hospital workers require ongoing training to ensure compliance with requirements from the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) and professional accrediting agencies. This is no small undertaking at Children’s Hospital, where nearly 3,000 doctors and nurses work alongside 4,600 employees and approximately 1,000 volunteers.

Benefits

• Saved hundreds of thousands of dollars in travel time and expenses
• Enhanced staff satisfaction
• Improved administrative and training effectiveness
• Met regulatory training requirements

Project Details

A prescription for success
In less than two years, Breeze meetings and Breeze training sessions have permeated the entire organization. From town hall meetings to technical training, the use of Breeze has streamlined administrative operations, enhanced employee satisfaction, and saved hundreds of thousands of dollars in travel-related costs and staff time.

Physicians, who generally do not like to travel to off-site meetings, have heartily embraced the web conferencing capabilities in Breeze. “With multiple urban campuses, the drive time between locations can take well over an hour,” says Danny Shaw, chief knowledge officer at Children’s Hospital. “Now doctors with very full calendars are attending online Breeze meetings in record numbers. We have minimized their need to travel, and they are delighted.”

For instance, it doesn’t make sense for the chief of staff in cardiology to commute an hour to attend an administrative meeting. Fortunately, with Breeze doctors can attend meetings and collaborate across campuses without ever leaving their offices.

Says Shaw, “People are scheduling Breeze meetings using the Breeze add-in from Microsoft Outlook. They are beginning to realize how effective Breeze meetings can be and how simple it is to set them up.”

Addressing accreditation requirements
To meet accreditation requirements, employees have to attend quarterly town hall–style meetings previously held in a large auditorium. Now they can log in to rich media, web-based Breeze meetings from remote locations. Slides, video, and medical images can be incorporated into visually interesting presentations by hospital directors.

“We had more than 50 concurrent Breeze connections during our last quarterly meeting, many of which originated in conference rooms,” says Shaw. “With multiple people sharing connections at each location, we easily reached hundreds of people remotely.”

The quarterly meetings are recorded and available for playback around the clock. The indexed, searchable recordings are an important addition to a work environment that never sleeps.

Smoother technical and clinical training
Given the large number of users and the variety of computing systems throughout the organization, the technical documentation team at Children’s Hospital also relies on Breeze Presenter to create and disseminate user training guides outlining how to leverage the latest updates to the hospital’s computing systems.

“Breeze enables us to rapidly change content for fast delivery,” says Shaw. Because Breeze is based on Macromedia Flash platform from Adobe, distributing up-to-date content is never an issue. Flash is already installed on every computer in the organization, eliminating the need to wait for special downloads or install separate applications while ensuring graphically crisp, reliable delivery.

Much of the technical training at Children’s Hospital revolves around system software. In addition to slides and audio, the technical documentation team produces software simulations using Adobe Captivate and seamlessly incorporates the content into instructional tutorials.

“Our employees can fit training into their schedules, not ours,” says Shaw. Using the quizzing and reporting features in Breeze, training staff can track attendance to compile statistics for regulatory compliance.

When developing new in-house software, the IT staff at Children’s Hospital uses screen sharing in Breeze for collaboration. “We share desktops to demonstrate progress points to a dispersed audience,” says Shaw. Additionally, help desk staff is using screen sharing to troubleshoot problems on users’ desktops.

Adobe products integrated into operations
The IT staff at Children’s Hospital Boston uses Macromedia ColdFusion software from Adobe to integrate front-end processes with critical back-end systems. Children’s Hospital also uses Adobe Photoshop CS2 to help create web content and Adobe Acrobat software to distribute content in Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) via the website. In the video department, staff uses Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premiere Pro software to create broadcast materials, web content, and corporate presentations.

Adobe tools help address Children’s Hospital communication and collaboration needs in an integrated environment, supporting the medical complex in its continual pursuit of excellence in medicine and research.