Revolutionary Critical Care Technology Reduces Length of Stay and Ventilation in ICU
Posted on 26 Jul 2023
Complications acquired in the intensive care unit (ICU), such as aspiration pneumonia, malnutrition, and acute kidney injury associated with nutrition, present key challenges in critical care. The current standard of care, which depends on manual calculations to determine patient nutritional needs, can be inaccurate by up to 50%. This often leads to patients being underfed or overfed (resulting in malnutrition rates as high as 78%) — both situations correlate with increased mortality rates. Furthermore, uncontrolled reflux events pose a significant risk for aspiration and pneumonia. Routine medical procedures often interrupt feeding without compensating for the required nutrition, leaving most ICU patients achieving less than 60% of nutrition adequacy.
Existing solutions fail to sufficiently address these complex, interconnected complications. The current standard of care not only influences patient outcomes but also places an economic burden on hospitals, which are not reimbursed for additional costs incurred when treating ICU-acquired complications. This emphasizes the urgent need for effective cost-mitigation strategies. Now, a cutting-edge platform with integrated software and sensor-based tools is designed to detect and reduce the risk of feeding-related complications while enhancing feeding efficiency.
The smART+ Platform from ART MEDICAL (Netanya, Israel) continuously monitors nutrient delivery and automatically identifies and compensates for any feeding interruption, ensuring the appropriate nutrition is delivered and reducing the risk of malnutrition. The platform's sensors and monitoring technology also help identify acute kidney injury and potential reflux events, both of which can be life-threatening if not detected early. In the event of a change detected in the feeding tube position, the system promptly halts feeding and notifies the staff via an interface alert and an audible alarm. With the help of the sensors, clinical staff can easily reposition the tube. smART+ simplifies tube repositioning and automatically resumes feeding.
A comparative randomized study evaluating the performance of the smART+ Platform has shown that it can maximize feeding efficiency, achieving nearly 90% of the targeted nutrition goal, and enhance patient outcomes by reducing both the ICU length of stay and the length of ventilation by 3.3 days. This significant advancement paves the way for the commercialization of ART MEDICAL's revolutionary technology.
"Medical devices in critical care nutrition have had little to no innovation over the last several decades. Nutrition, while considered important, was never directly correlated to ICU length of stay," said Liron Elia, founder and CEO of ART MEDICAL. "The groundbreaking data of this study puts nutrition management front and center of critical care and proves that malnutrition and aspiration can only be treated holistically and in real time. Our evidence shows that by optimizing nutrition, we can dramatically improve patient outcomes. We are excited to introduce the smART+ Platform to the global market, providing clinicians with a powerful tool to elevate the standard of care in ICUs and help the sickest patients."
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