Remote Patient Monitoring Systems Could Assist Overstressed ICUs

New technologies in remote patient monitoring have the potential to combat soaring healthcare costs, personnel shortages, and hospitalization times. These are the latest findings of Kalorama Information (New York, NY, USA), an independent market research firm.

Due to the predicted shortages of intensivists, cardiologists, and nurses in the United States in the upcoming 5-10 years, the concept of the enhanced intensive care unit (eICU) systems in a critical care setting is growing. The Swedish Medical Center (Seattle, WA, USA) has been in the vanguard in the adoption of an eICU, with the installation of Visicu electronic ICU, a product of Philips Healthcare (Erlangen, Germany), which allows intensivists and critical care nurses at the eICU command center to make virtual rounds of patients through an elaborate network of cameras, monitors, and two-way communication links via T1 lines.

Other examples of remote patient monitoring systems include products by Draeger (Lübeck, Germany), GE Healthcare, and Abbott. Another facility, Sentara Healthcare (Norfolk, VA, USA), also installed an eICU program and has reported that it reduced intensive care mortality rates by 25%, as well as shortening the average length of stay for patients in the eICU setting by 17%. In this case, per patient costs dropped by US$2,150, based on reduced patient expenses, and increased ICU capacity; this generated approximately $3 million in savings for the facility.

“With an eICU intensivists can remotely monitor the condition of patients, check vital signs, and communicate with hospital personnel, patients and their families in multiple locations from one command center,” said Bruce Carlson, publisher of Kalorama Information. “It should help to relieve stress on cardiologists, critical care physicians, and nurses.”

Kalorama Information valued the market for remote patient monitoring in the United States at $7.1 billion in 2010, and forecasts an explosive annual growth rate of 25.4%, reaching $22.2 billion by 2015.

Related Links:
Kalorama Information
Philips Healthcare
Draeger