The eICU

Interesting post over at Web Worker Daily, of all places, on Visicu. To an extent they stretch the definition of web work in the context of eICU, bugat nevertheless it’s a look into the potential future of medicine.

If you recall I wrote about a BT-funded report which emphasized telemdicine. The eICU is part of the pharma future envisionsed in that report.

So what is the Visicy solution?

The eICU® solution is sold to large, multi-hospital health systems that want to improve the quality of their intensive care unit (ICU) care. If you can understand how air traffic controllers and onboard technology for pilots keeps fliers safe, you’ll be able to understand how an eICU facility keeps patients safe.

In other words, the idea is to create a system that allows to monitor patients remotely and direct appropriate care to the patients who need it. Here’s more

An eICU facility is staffed with an intensivist-led care team that can monitor and care for hundreds of patients …. the eICU care team uses software alerts to track patient vital trends and intervene earlier—before complications occur. Studies show that this type of care model can reduce ICU mortality by 25% and save costs. The keys are constant surveillance, providing the patient with immediate physician access and arming the physician with the patient information needed to make the right decisions, quickly.

Companies like Intel have set up Digital Health groups because one of the ways technology can improve patient care is by allowing early intervention and remote monitoring. The eICU concept fits very well into that paradigm. Sensors, software triggers, etc, might appear intrusive to some, e.g. in the pharma futurology case described in the earlier post, but in the case of intensive care, I don’t think anyone is complaining that their vitals are being monitored and care is going to be provided appropriately.

The challenge as I see it is in expertise and cost. These systems are still expensive and out of reach of all but the most well funded hospitals, and finding appropriate staff is not going to be easy. That said, such systems are an important step into a technology backed healthcare future.

The next step would be to integrate these systems with personal remote monitoring systems at costs individuals can afford and physicians could tap into. The challenge as always are going to be privacy and how insurance companies will use/misuse these facilities.

One final note. While the airline traffic controller analogy is great, I hope they can do a better job that airline controllers seem to be doing with air traffic congestion

Technorati Tags: Telemedicine, Visicu, eICU, Healthcare