PWEB Sunsetting in July
Hi everyone,
Has anyone else heard anything about PWEB being sunset in July 2019? We were informed of this last week...I am having a hard time getting a hold of anyone at Abbott who can tell me what this means for us. Does anyone know anything?
With this on the horizon we are in the market for a new POC middleware. Our two main contenders are UniPOC and RALS. I've only ever worked with PWEB so I can't really give my lab manager an opinion either way. In your experience which middleware is the best overall?
Background: I work in a 300 bed trauma 2 center. We have about 150 freestyle glucometers, 7 i-STATs, 4 hemochron signature elites, 3 avoximeter 1000E, and 2 Medtronic HMS in house. Currently we only have our glucometers and i-STATs interfaced. I'd like to interface the rest of our instrumentation including what we have in my 24 satellite clinics. (Clinitek, Coagucheck, DCA Vantage, and hemocue.)
We are moving to a brand new hospital and lab in April of 2019 and administration wants to get a new middleware validated and in use before then. On top of everything else that we have going on with our move. So as you can imagine I'm freaking out a little. Please let me know your thoughts!
Thank you in advance!
Ruth Harmala, MLS (ASCP)CM
Point of Care Coordinator, Laboratory
UP Health System-Marquette
(906) 225-7492
| Topic | Replies | Likes | Views | Participants | Last Reply |
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| iSTAT in NICU -chem 8, CG4 | 4 | 0 | 160 | ||
| Rotem Sigma Validation Help | 1 | 0 | 87 | ||
| Hemochron Sig Elite use outside of manufacturer temperature range | 2 | 0 | 144 |
Hi Ruth,
Have you considered Telcor? I am currently in the process of bringing on Ketone meters and the only option we had was Unipoc, Pweb was not available.
Adonica
Adonica Wilson
Point of Care Coordinator, Clinical Laboratory-Department of Pathology
Alfred I duPont Hospital for Children
1600 Rockland Rd
Wilmington, De 19803
office phone: 302-651-4324
cell phone: 302-377-9089
fax: 302-651-4842
adonica.wilson@nemours.org
Hi Ruth! I see you are from Marquette! My cousin Heidi Burkhard-Henry is a Breast Doc up there, and my step-mom and brother live there too. I hear it's a cold one today!
I loved Pweb when I had it, and I can see why you would want to choose UniPOC since it would be basically exactly the same as what you are used to. Someone else may correct me, but my main con about UniPOC was that I could never un-certify someone for a device they no longer use. So if they stopped using iSTAT because they now work in an area that doesn't have one, I couldn't remove their certification for just iSTAT but keep them certified for glucose, etc.
I had RALS before too, and my main con with them was the expense. They charge you for the servers, then they charge you for the device module, then they charge you for each location, then they charge you for each individual device. You also did not have the ability to add devices or locations like you can with Pweb, every single thing is a call to tech support. Need to move a glucometer from your main hospital to a new clinic? That is a charge, plus an entire IT project cluster.
Right now I have Telcor, I have 7 locations (one hospital plus 6 ancillary ED/Urgent Care Clinic locations), with iSTATs, Nova Meters, Cliniteks, Sysmex PocHi's, DCA Vantages and we are adding HemoCue's on there. Generally I like it. The price was right, and I get all of the data plus way more than what I was able to get from Pweb. The reports are just ok, and the end-user experience is not intuitive - you need training to use it, and while I was frustrated by that initially, once I reached out to Telcor and received training I was much more comfortable with the product. I also like that if something isn't working the way I want it to, they will usually build it for me so that it does - they do a lot of custom build. You just have to get used to the spreadsheet formatting of everything, which I really really hope they improve on some day.
Hi Silka! Yes, it is pretty cold around these parts lately! I think we're supposed to get a warm spell this weekend--its going to feel like spring.
I've heard about that certification issue with UniPOC as well. Does anyone know if you can just expire their certification?
Yikes. I don't like the sound of all those expenses with RALS. I feel like I am constantly building new locations for glucometers, whether it's in the hospital or a new POC clinic. I feel that I've become pretty self reliant when it comes to POC and having to call tech support just to add a device or location sounds like extra time and money.
After I saw your message last night I was trying to find what I could about Telcor and what the dashboard looks like. I couldn't find much, but from what you're telling me I think I'll get it touch with a rep to get a quote. How does their customer support work? When you need something custom built is there a charge like there is from RALS?
Thank you!
Hi Ruth,
I have experience with Telcor and I am currently a RALS customer. I just wanted to add my two cents to the conversation.
I really love my RALS system for its management abilities for devices, QC, operators and results. I highly recommend it. I manage over 475 devices currently and it does the job for us. It is very intuitive and easy to use. We are actually giving access to our nursing educators so they can track their staff who need to perform controls at the time of annual competencies. This has been a great time saver and the nursing staff love to have this ability. You can give them view only so no settings will be accidently changed. I am not sure if the other middlewares have this function. With POCT growing and our departments not getting more hours , this is a game changer to be able to delegate this task for over 5,000 users.
They are always updating and keeping current with new version updates every 6 months or so to add new tests and functions. And they listen to the customer! They have a customer advisory board that changes on a regular basis for feedback that is actually listened to.
They have awesome customer service and tech support. Calls are picked up quickly and issues can be resolved promptly.
When looking at a middle ware, make sure you are getting the cost for everything you need to get going. Such as data managers, support or extra software. I would say give them both a look for functionality and ease of use. I feel you can only make your choice after you see the platforms in action. Ask for demos. Then you can get the best price from each vendor and then its time to negotiate!!!!
JoAnn Crain
I have no experience with other middleware systems other than RALS, but I couldn't make my point of care testing program function without it. Being able to manage point of care test results, instruments and operators from my office or any pc throughout the hospital when I'm "visiting my points" increases my productivity and I like being able to check on things right away when presented with the question / problem on the unit.
I agree with JoAnn's comments. RALS is one system that works well for large systems like hers, but also works well in smaller hospitals or systems of smaller hospitals like ours.
RALS has great tech support that goes above and beyond and helps find ways to fulfill your requests. Sometimes you have to wait for the next upgrade, but it's only 6 months away.
Whenever you need to make a change, it's always best to look at all of the options / vendors, get demonstrations, do site visits if possible, get price quotes and determine what is best for your facility.
Hi,
I too could not function without RALS. I love all the reports. I can usually get my director any data she needs within minutes. We have interfaces to glucometers, Cliniteks, Hemochrons, iSTAT, Hepcon, DCA Vantage, HemoCue and manually entered tests in the Glucometers. It graphs linearities and LJ QC. Very intuitive navigating. We just upgraded to version 5.19 as we were about 12 upgrades behind and it went very smoothly. I too have learned how to add my own locations and add additional analyzers and configure them and the only help I need from RALS is to turn on wireless behind the scenes and connect ADT to the locations. I don't get charged extra unless it's a complicated demand. When we added all the additional interfaces, we were able to negotiate some good prices. But yes, as a whole RALS is very expensive, but to me work every penny.
Has anyone considered Relaymed? I was referred to it by istat reps when I called them to inquire about middleware. We are looking into it now. You pay monthly or annually. It looks uncomplicated and fortunately if you don’t like it you can just cancel.
Sent via Groupsite Mobile.
I've also heard good things about Orchard Trellis, but have not seen a demo myself. Just to answer a few questions from above - Telcor is also web based, so yes I can access it from any computer in my organization, but I typically would just bring my laptop with me anyways. Also, when I said that RALS charges for a new location, I meant facility location, not location within the same facility. At my last place of employment I was managing over 200 facilities (17 hospitals, 18 FSED's and about 175 clinics) with interfaced POC at each. Every time we added a clinic we would put in a glucometer. We still had our 200 iSTATs and 800 glucometers on Pweb at that time, and we were only using RALS for our Cliniteks, AVOX's, and our Nova meters from our neighboring state because they were in a different time zone. Alere was charging us every time we opened a new clinic, or ED - both for the location and for the devices. With Pweb I was used to just creating a new facility, adding and moving devices as needed, and never paid extra. I guess that explains why Abbott dumped it - RALS is much more lucrative for them now :)
Ruth, when I needed some custom build for the POCHi Telcor did not charge me more, I had already paid for the POCHi interface, so they worked with us to get it to do what we needed it to do. Much of the issue was actually the POCHi, but they were able to resolve our issues and make it work. I have had excellent service from them so far. They answer the phone when you call, and you get a lot of personal attention.
I called Abbott today to ask about this and was told they don't know anything about it. We are between sales reps so I am trying to get someone from sales to contact us. We are planning to try and go to the Telcor direct connect this year anyway due to server 2008 being sunsetted this year. They don't have anyone live yet but I reviewed the documentation and it looks Telcor covered all the functionality of Pweb.
We are in Michigan also. If you don't mind sharing your Abbott sales rep contact info maybe I could reach out to that person. Our rep Rafat took a new position a few months ago.
We are currently investigating our middleware options. Does anyone have any information to offer regarding the new Orchard Trellis? Also, does anyone have an AVOX 1000 that is interfaced?
Thanks!
We did check into Trellis and it looks great. We currently have Telcor for our Nova meters, DCA, Hemocue and Clinteks so it made the most sense to move ISTAT to Telcor also. We have had great service with Telcor. We just finished getting the signatures from all involved parties and are now moving in the direction of the actual move.
As for the PWeb sunset, I did reach out to my Abbott rep. He could not address my question in an email. Something that did come to mind as I have seen these discussions pop up: Abbott no longer owns (if I can use that term) PWeb. They have not for a few years. The latest "owner" is Siemens. You might get more information reaching out to them.
Thanks everyone for your responses! Yvonne, I was not able to determine who our account rep is for Pweb, but I did speak directly with someone from Abbott Informatics, Bill Peterson. I have his direct line and email, send me an email ruth.harmala@mghs.org if you would like his contact info. He informed me that Pweb was not being sunset in July and that they will continue to support it. I'm wondering if there was some miscommunication between Abbott and Siemens and Alere with the new acquisitions.
Anyway, since we are a Lifepoint facility we have to go in the direction that corporate chooses. They have a plan and infrastructure in place to move us to a new system later this year. So I am breathing a sigh of relief that we are not in dire straights as I thought. I am more than happy to hand this off and focus on our move to our new facility.
Thank you again everyone for your input!