GE just began trials of its “Smart Patient Room health-monitoring project” at New York’s Bassett Medical Center to keep hospitals sanitary and to eliminate medical errors.
GE Smart Patient Room health monitoring project
Part of GE’s Healthymagination initiative, the Smart Patient Room can determine whether soap and sanitizer dispensers are used by medical personnel before and after seeing a patient. In fact, an ICU nurse should wash his or her hands 200 times a shift in order to follow proper infection control practices – which means washing before touching a patient and washing after touching a patient. The proper method requires a nurse to smear the alcohol rub around for 1 minute during each washing. That’s more than 3 hours of hand-washing a shift! Would this be bad for the skin of the nurse?
According to Scott Gallagher, a senior consultant for GE Healthcare, RFID sensors are installed in dispensers for soap or alcohol-based hand sanitizers to determine when medical personnel are using them and following hygiene protocol. In addition to hand hygiene compliance, the technology tracks when patients get in and out of bed to help prevent falls. The GE Smart Patient Room also monitors clinical roundups to ensure that clinicians check in on patients at least once per hour. The technology consists of optical sensors, RFID tags, facial recognition, computer vision algorithms, cameras and speakers installed in existing hospital rooms to monitor patient safety and reduce medical errors, according to GE. Medical errors are a leading cause of death in the United States, organizations such as the Institute of Medicine and Millennium Research Group have reported.
According to Gallagher, an AI engine sits on top of the RFID signals. “Through computer vision algorithms, we can detect people and track them as they go through the room,” he said. The monitoring system then issues an alert when it detects a risk, such as patient movement or facial expressions indicating a possible stroke. A doctor or nurse can then check on the patient to either make sure the patient is safe or start treatment.
“Our goal here is to use this approach to sense the motion, action of individuals, and then determine whether they’re within a given policy and work toward better outcomes,” Peter Tu, research scientist for GE’s Global Research Center, told eWEEK.
Likening the Smart Patient Room platform to an iPhone running an abundance of applications, Tu expects hospitals to use the technology to detect patient delirium, particularly as a result of a medication reaction; check for ulcers; and watch for signs of pain or stroke based on facial expressions.
Tu noted that the wires are connected to sensors behind the walls and that PCs would transmit motion and action rather than actual video to protect patients’ privacy. “We ensure privacy of individuals,” he said.
Gallagher added that the sensors and monitoring would not be visible to patients. “What’s important is that the technology is transparent to the patient and to the care provider,” he explained. “It’s the data that comes from the sensor technology that creates the value for the hospital.”
The technology was developed at GE’s Global Research Center in Niskayuna, N.Y., and will be tested at the Bassett Medical Center inpatient teaching facility. The pilot project marks GE’s first implementation of the Smart Patient Room in a clinical environment, according to Gallagher.
“[Caregivers] get into such a routine that it’s, ‘This is what I do,’ and they don’t realize that they haven’t” washed their hands properly before treating patients, GE Healthcare CTO Mike Harsh said, reports the Reuters news service. “We’re able to analyze that in real time and say, ‘Hey, remember to do this.’”
On a related note, the year-old Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare recently introduced a web-based tool to help hospitals track and analyze quality and safety programs, starting with hand hygiene. (Health Data Management reports that future uses will include communications at patient hand-offs, wrong-site surgery and surgical-site infections.)
Hi D77,
I see the future of hospital-based care, and already many doctor’s offices; the awesome ability for the entire team taking care of a patient, to use the technology that we have available to us, and instantaneous information regarding updates– in new orders from the Physician, to the then updated Nursing Care Plan, obtaining newly ordered medications quickly, and on down the line of the team it takes to make it work, giving a heads up to all involved so much quicker, and any early information regarding your patient is a good thing!
I am looking at this wonderful new technology from a nurses viewpoint, and I truly wonder–what will the generations that are to be our future medical teams be taught? Will there be significant time saved for staff on extremely time-consuming jobs, excellent training and an on-site Technical individual 24/7 to oversee these Super Rooms? Will this technology boost the every-day Continuity of Care that must stay at a high level; will this outshine the archaic but often still used, handwritten charting, (yes, this still exists,) handwritten med orders, “The Boards”, holding Antibiotic lists, special IV administrations, the frequent personal checks on the patients, of course while the next patient is hopefully being monitored the entire time via their Super Room?
This seems to point to one major issue all nurses face. OK, I won’t be so broad using ‘all nurses’. How about most nurses? I’m sure you, in your experience, have heard the main complaint of nurses: We do not have the ability to spend as much time as we would like to with each patient. Usually followed shortly by, “THAT is why I entered nursing to begin with!”
Will these new technologies free up nurses to provide a more relaxed visit to one patient? Will doctors, nurses, and our first-line warning system called CNA’s, benefit from this?
**Those lovely CNA’s, who can alert nurses to change of skin condition for instance, (Whom have also been notoriously underpaid, especially for what the job requirements entail.) And please don’t ever say, “Oh, I’m a glorified ass-wiper.” CNA’s have the advantage seeing the patient’s entire body more often than the nurses do; and when a thorough person stays aware of these changes, they can then be attended to rapidly and aggressively, and having worked for years as a wound care nurse; I’ve had my entire fist, (+more room,) inside one of many unbelievable necrotic horrors I’ve poured my love and care into healing, called Stage 4 Decubitis. The always hovering, waiting to strike when all the elements are present, when it is ‘just so’; is a tremendous problem in patients with limited movement; whether in the hospital, or at Home. Physical Therapists, Dietitians, Respiratory Therapists, each with their own area of knowledge; certainly ALL important, dedicated people who are part of the team caring for one patient, benefit from a total team set-up in a given Health Care facility.
When this system you wrote about enters the public sector, becoming available at more than simply a few selected Hospitals, will the total cost of the team be a surprise when the bill is received? Do we need to raise our budgets tremendously, not only for this type of equipment, but will a 500 mg. tablet of Tylenol become $40/pill? Are the costs hidden in those sorts of ways? Are these being reserved for the ‘pricier’ Hospitals? I’m truly interested.
Sorry ’bout the novel…anyone that knows me is aware I can not start to write, and stop with simply a paragraph!
Ergo no Twitter for me.
Gentle Hugs….
Shauna Harrelson LVN, CDT
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Do you know about any efforts to reduce noise in hospitals? Or cases where noise or alarm fatigue contributed to hospital errors? Thanks!
Julie
Julie, their is a plethora of info out there about this – According to the Boston Globe, between 2005 and 2010, more than 200 hospital patients died nationally from an improper response to “patient monitors.” Patient monitors are those machines that keep track of heart function, respiratory rate and other vital signs. Typically, nurses are responsible for watching monitors.
“Alarm fatigue,” a phenomenon where nurses become desensitized to frequent monitor beeping and constant false alarms, may contribute to instances of nursing negligence. A study at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore revealed 942 critical alarms on one floor, in one day. “That’s one alarm every 91 seconds,” said New York hospital negligence lawyer Michael A. Bottar, Esq., of Bottar Leone, PLLC, a Syracuse based law firm representing patients injured due to hospital mistakes and errors.
“The alarms become background noise,” Bottar said. In one case, a patient who was wheeled into an intensive care unit and connected to a cardiac heart monitor. The leads slipped off and the machine sounded an alarm, but nursing staff did not respond. The patient stopped breathing and died without anyone noticing. At a different hospital, a patient’s heart monitor displayed a flat line for more than two hours because the battery was low. Even though they were checking on the patient, the nurses did not change the battery. The patient suffered a heart attack without anyone knowing, and died.
Nurses work in a loud, busy and often over-stimulating environment. As there are only so many nurses to care for the patient population, when machines are simultaneously emitting a “low-priority alarm (e.g., a low battery) and a “high-priority alarm” (e.g., a cardiac arrest), the high-priority alarms receive greater attention. The low-priority alarms get attention when there is time. But low-priority alarms, such as those indicating low battery power, need attention too. Bottar added, “there is no way to monitor for a heart attack, or low blood sugar, or low oxygen saturation, if the monitor is off.”