The Nebraska Medical Center, the state’s largest healthcare facility, announced that it will soon be equipping clinicians and nurses with iPhones after inking a deal with Voalté to deploy its custom healthcare application. The Nebraska Medical Center is the first academic-based medical center in the country to use the Voalté software, according to the company.

“Communication is an essential ingredient for excellent patient care,” said Dawn Straub, Director, Nursing Professional Practice and Development at The Nebraska Medical Center in a press release. “We recognize the importance of smartphone technology and how it can give our nurses more time with their patients.”

Voalté is an iPhone application that combines voice, alarm and text features, and was chosen by the Medical Center after a year-long assessment. Nurses and clinicians will be able to send and receive presence-based text messages and make high-definition voice calls across the hospital VoIP system on one device. The hospital-wide installation will integrate hundreds of iPhones with the hospital’s PBX and WiFi system in order to improve communication between the patients and staff.

Voalté's growing list of customers includes Texas Children's, Heartland Health, Huntington Hospital, Sarasota Memorial and more.

Check out the press release after the jump.

iPhones Adopted by The Nebraska Medical Center

The Nebraska Medical Center becomes first academic hospital to use iPhones to improve nurse communication

SARASOTA, Fla. June 14, 2011 – Nurses and clinicians at The Nebraska Medical Center, the state’s largest health care facility, will soon be using iPhones to improve their communication and increase efficiency, thanks to Voalté’s first-of-its-kind integrated communication solution. The Nebraska Medical Center is the first academic-based medical center in the country to implement the Voalté solution.

Voalté, an application that consolidates voice, alarm and text on the versatile iPhone platform, was selected by the Medical Center after a year-long mobile technology review and assessment of legacy handsets and voice badges.

“We’re thankful The Nebraska Medical Center selected Voalté after a rigorous selection process,” said Trey Lauderdale, vice president of innovation at Voalté. “Partnerships of this sort continue to validate our commitment to increasing nursing excellence and patient safety.”

According to Lauderdale, many of our nation’s nurses are still using archaic tools such as pagers or bulky legacy VoIP phones that weren’t designed for everyday use, so they spend much of their time dealing with, finding or coordinating information.

The Voalté solution will enable nurses and clinicians at the teaching hospital to send and receive presence-based text messages and make high-definition voice calls across the hospital VoIP system on one device, providing faster response to patients. The hospital-wide installation will integrate hundreds of iPhones to the hospital’s PBX and WiFi system thus leveraging existing infrastructure for optimal communication.

“As the primary teaching hospital for the University of Nebraska Medical Center, we are committed to focusing on quality improvement,” said Lianne Stevens, CIO and vice president of information technology at The Nebraska Medical Center.

“Communication is an essential ingredient for excellent patient care,” added Dawn Straub, Director, Nursing Professional Practice and Development at The Nebraska Medical Center. “We recognize the importance of smartphone technology and how it can give our nurses more time with their patients.”

The Apple iPhone is a perfect fit for a teaching hospital that is known for its innovation and quality patient care, according to Voalté’s CEO Rob Campbell, a former Apple pioneer.

“Apple has a long-standing commitment to improving education, so what better tool to use than the iPhone to streamline communication and integrate voice, alarm and texts so that nurses can communicate more efficiently and focus on patient care,” he said.

About The Nebraska Medical Center

With a reputation for excellence, innovation and extraordinary patient care, The Nebraska Medical Center has earned J.D. Power and Associates’ Hospital of Distinction award for inpatient services for four consecutive years. It also received the 2010 Consumer Choice Award, a mark of patient satisfaction as selected by healthcare consumers and has achieved Magnet recognition status for nursing excellence, Thomson Reuters 100 Top Hospitals Performance Improvement Leader recognition, as well as the Award of Progress from the state of Nebraska’s Edgerton Quality Awards Program. As the teaching hospital for the University of Nebraska Medical Center, this 624 licensed bed academic medical center has an international reputation for providing solid organ and bone marrow transplantation services and is well known nationally and regionally for its oncology, neurology and cardiology programs. The Nebraska Medical Center can be found online at www.nebraskamed.com.

About Voalté

Voaltéâ provides compelling software solutions for healthcare institutions that solve communication problems at the point-of-care. Voalté products are designed to be intuitive, high value, mission critical applications running on the latest generation of touch-based smartphones. For more information, visit www.Voalte.com or call 941.312.2830.