Quick Summary
Jeff Richard has been named President of Lone Star Communications’ Alairo Solutions Group, which builds on Lone Star’s legacy by helping customers get the most out of new and existing technology systems.
By providing innovative tools focused on fall prevention, alarm analytics, and unified hospital messaging and communications, Alairo hopes to fill persistent gaps in the clinical practice environment, with fall prevention its top priority.
Alairo’s different functionality modules form a unified whole that will integrate seamlessly with the rest of Lone Star, assuring stability for existing customer relationships.
In keeping with its mission to make healthcare communities safer by delivering “the right product, on time, first time, every time,” Lone Star Communications has named former CTO Jeff Richard as president of the company’s Alairo Solutions Group.
Made up of a small team of Lone Star members and tech companies Lone Star has invested in, Alairo’s nurse call-centric platform has a threefold focus: fall prevention, alarm analytics, and unified hospital messaging and communications.
The group’s goal of helping customers get the most out of new and existing technology systems makes it a natural progression for the Lone Star family—building off the company’s 32-year legacy by offering expanded healthcare solutions and consulting to its customers while filling persistent gaps in the clinical practice environment.
“In the past we may have been limited as to some of the things we could do beyond our core business,” says Kenny Schiff, director of analytics for Lone Star and Alairo’s director of marketing, “but Alairo offers an opportunity to take all the things we do great, and do so much more with it.”
Filling the Fall Prevention Gap
In sticking to its core business and the relationships that have made the company so successful, Lone Star recognizes there are opportunities in the healthcare environment to provide an augmentative solution, and Alairo fits the bill perfectly.
“We have a real opportunity to stand behind what we say we're going to do and transform healthcare through innovation,” says Jeff Richard. “We've spent a lot of time evaluating where the gaps are with the customers and listening to our customers, but also evaluating the technologies that would help fill those gaps.”
The largest of these, by Richard’s reckoning, is in fall prevention. With patient falls accounting for up to 30% of all hospital-acquired injuries—there are up to one million falls in the U.S. every year, costing over $34 billion per year—Alairo’s AI-powered predictive analytics can accurately identify patients most at risk of falling. The resulting increased patient safety comes with better caregiver efficiency and significantly reduced costs associated with fall-related injuries.
Richard acknowledges there are many competing tools and fall prevention bundles in the current environment, but he underlines their lack of success in reducing falls. “Patients are still getting injured and length of stay is growing,” he says.
Analyzing Alarms and Sharing Data
While fall prevention is currently its primary focus, Alairo continues to refine its alarm analytics and hospital messaging platforms.
With alarm analytics, Alairo is able to help hospital staff identify false alarms and nuisance alarms, which can be time-consuming and disruptive for healthcare providers. In analyzing this data, Alairo can optimize alarm settings, fine-tune thresholds, and reduce unnecessary alarms, freeing up staff to focus on critical tasks and patient care.
Alairo’s machine learning algorithms can also identify potential hazards before they occur, giving caregivers the tools they need to provide proactive care—which can lead to better outcomes for patients and reduce caregiver workloads.
Powered by Vizabli, Alairo’s unified hospital messaging and communications platform brings together a dynamic flow of information between patient engagement, clinical engagement, and family updates. This allows data to be synchronized across mobile devices, interactive digital displays positioned inside and outside patient rooms, and larger wall displays that replace traditional marker boards at nursing stations.
Maintaining a Consistent Relationship with Customers
Aside from their clear benefits, Alairo’s offerings are integrated into the greater company so that, from the customer’s perspective, nothing will change in their existing relationship with Lone Star. End users will continue to reach out to the same people they’ve worked with, with Alairo being accessed as needed. The new technology will be incorporated seamlessly.
“The 32-year reputation of Lone Star is quite strong and has great relationships,” Richard says, “and a lot of time has been spent cultivating relationships with our customer base.”
Ideally, according to Lone Star CTO Justin Bailey, customers won’t even know it’s an integrated solution. “To them it's [just] one thing,” he states, “and that thing is Alairo.”
A Unified Whole
By working together so closely, Alairo’s different functionality modules tie in to Bailey’s somewhat tongue-in-cheek conception of a “grand unified theory of healthcare.” To him, this encompasses cutting-edge technology made up of best-in-breed components contributed by Lone Star’s ongoing partners.
“We've brought them in,” he explains, “and actually built a system together to maximize the value that each [partner] brings to the table.”
Richard reinforces this, adding, “I think we've done a great job pulling together a meaningful group of solution owners—some of which Lone Star owns—in a comprehensive way to complement and augment not only the nurse call system, but other clinical solutions in the environment.”
A Focus on Measurable Results
Looking forward to his new role as the group’s president, Richard’s plans include continuing to improve Alairo’s technical aspects, attracting investment partners to help spread Alairo’s reach in the clinical practice environment, maintaining a laser focus on fall prevention, and finding opportunities to make an impact as quickly as possible in order to best serve Lone Star’s customers.
If nothing else, Schiff believes, Alairo is able to provide end users with measurable results. “The promise for our customers,” he says, “is to not only give them the technology and services necessary, but to show that it actually works, and there's evidence to support that.”
In the bigger picture, Lone Star’s leadership will continue to invest heavily in innovation and expanded consultative services, creating a unified whole designed to improve patient care, caregiver welfare, and hospital operations and metrics across the industry.
Before being appointed President of Alairo Solutions Group, Jeff Richard was Lone Star Communications’ CTO. Prior to that he was a customer of Lone Star while working at Baylor Scott and White—one of the largest health systems in the U.S. His 23 years of experience in the healthcare industry and as a business owner have left him with strong leadership skills combined with clinical and operational experience in building and leading teams.
As Lone Star Communications’ R&D Director & CTO, Justin Bailey is responsible for leveraging new technologies to improve patient and caregiver experience. He has been with Lone Star since the late 1990s.
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