Struggling with newest generation Nova StatStrip meters

I have never been a fan of the connectivity of the Nova meter.  We went live in September of this year, and the connectivity of the next generation is even worse. We keep telling staff to please ensure the meter stays docked when not in use and when the meter is on the dock ensure the meter has a green arrow up.   If you come across anything that helps please let us know!  I do not know how they got FDA approved for the critically ill with all their connectivity issues.  We have also seen other strange things.  At his moment I have a ticket in with Nova Biomedical about a meter that put in "scan" for a patient ID when they  scanned the armband.  I did not believe it even though it came across  middourleware that way,  I had to go check the result review in the meter and sure enough the word "SCAN". The meter was set to not allow typing in.  The ticket is currently with Nova's Research and Development team.  Not getting results to the chart in a timely manner is a problem too.  I think the Nova meter gives a good result, but if it never makes it to the chart?!?!
Good luck!

I don't know if this has anything to do with this, but how many meters do you have and how many servers?  We were never told this when we went live with our meters, but several weeks ago we all of a sudden started having issues with connectivity.  Long story short, we had too many meters and only one server set up. After moving some meters to a second server, we stopped getting phone calls from the floors. 

@Mi Hui, we have two servers for 300 meters.  How many meters do you have connected to your servers, and approximately, how many locations do you have on each server?

That might not be your problem then. We have under 300 meters and all of them were on one server. We were told than anything over 250 meters has to wait in line to connect to the server.  We moved one hospital's meters to one server and the other facilities to another. 

We have had the same issue.  For us it appears related to the wifi band the meters were connecting to.  Our system has minimal support for a 2.4Ghz wifi and even though we had the meters set to only connect to the 5.0 Ghz band, they were jumping to the 2.4 and losing connection.  It has improved some with a firmware update that will auto reboot the meter once docked if it doesn't connect to the network within 3 minutes.  I believe they are coming out with an update that should keep them on the 5.0 band, but I'm not sure when that will be released, we just keep getting told "soon".  We have also gotten the "scan" ID.  No idea where that is coming from or why.  We are hoping to update our NN software version soon as well bc we are having several issues with it.  We are also experiencing lots of scanning issues on the floors where they are having to reset meters to get them to even scan at all.

We have 2 servers and about 340 meters so I am thinking that is not our issue.  This morning they are talking about the support for wireless that we have - like what Kristine wrote about.  I have some doubt it's that because I turned off the wireless on 2 meters where it was happening frequently, but i still had results that took 22 hours to post to epic.  Some evidence does support it being the wireless so i can't totally discount that - There could be a mixture of problems.   
Our old Nova meters were connected directly to RALS and was a much better setup.  Sticking NN in between has been nothing but headache for everyone.  I feel if we could go back to that, things would be much better.

We brought a new hospital live on the Gen 2 meters last week and have experience extensive issues with them.  Although, they are wifi ready, that will be a phase 2 process.  Sounds like this was a good decision.  Number one issue with these meters that we are experiencing is the freezing up.  Nursing is complaining about having to reboot multiple times.  
I have never been told a thing about the 250-meter limit as we are now at 290!
Thank you for the information.

Martin, curious to know if are you experiencing long delays on the results getting to your LIS?  Sometimes nursing has to reboot the meter to get the result to post

For those who are having issues, are your NOVA meters wireless?

MLH just went live at all 5 of their hospitals in October. There are 360 meters on 2 severs and they are set up for wireless downloading. We are experiencing the connectivity, freezing and result posting delays as well. Nursing is very frustrated with the meters' performance.

For those having issues, are you all on RALS? We are planning to upgrade next year. We have Telcor interface and Epic.

Hi Mary, yes we have the NovaNet to RALS interface

Yes, NN to RALS and our meters are wireless AND wired but we still see connection issues.  RALS is not the problem it's either the meter or NN.

My thoughts are that NovaNet  software used with the GEN 2 StatStrip is not robust enough nor fleshed out enough. The interface connection between NovaNet and RALS disconnected for 3 hours last Friday and the only way the POCCs knew is because a Nurse manager called saying the results were not crossing. When questioned about an alert system for the this interface, we were told that NovaNet has never had an alert system and does not have one for this version. As POCCs we also found the NovaNet IFU to be very inadequate when describing what each functionality did. It seems like this version of NovaNet was rushed into production before it was fully developed so that the the GEN 2 StatStrip could be sold.