Improving Patient Safety by Continuous Monitoring at Regular Wards

Abstract

Currently, patients at regular hospital wards are not monitored continuously but only sporadically checked by nurses. However, they often are in a risk of post-operative complications that may lead to a rapid decline of their status. Another well-recognized risk is related to opiate based analgesia, which predisposes the patients to respiratory depression. Respiratory depression can develop fast and lead to severe brain damage or death. The safety of the patients in the regular wards could be greatly improved by introducing continuous technology-based monitoring. Requirements for such monitoring technology are however different from those in the current use scenarios of patient monitors used in operating rooms and intensive care units. In regular wards, many patients need to be able to move and the algorithms analyzing the physiological signals need to be able to tolerate the interference caused by these movements. Also, the monitoring system needs to provide a remote interface for the nurses to observe the ward centrally. We propose an affordable wearable system for ward-wide monitoring of patients. In addition to patient-worn measurement units, the system consists of local gateway/data display units and a central monitoring unit. The system is currently being evaluated in a clinical study at Tampere University Hospital, Finland.