Telemedicine Connects ICUs for Better patient Care

Intensive care unit (ICU) patients in small hospitals throughout the state of Maryland (USA) will now be connected by voice, video, and data lines to specialized physicians and nurses at a tertiary care referral center 210 kilometers away.

The Maryland eCare system virtually connects physicians, nurses and patients via voice, camera, and data, enabling hospitals to provide the highest level of specialized care around the clock by supplementing local ICU staff with experienced critical care physicians and nurses at the remote monitoring center. Patients at the ICU at Calvert Memorial Hospital (Prince Frederick, MD, USA), the first hospital to join the program, are now fully online with the sophisticated eCare system, which is linked to a remote monitoring center at Christiana Care Hospital (Wilmington, DL, USA). Moment-by-moment monitoring quickly detects changes in patient condition, watching trends in crucial indicators such as blood pressure, heart rate, oxygen levels, and respiratory rates, allowing the remote unit staff to alert and work cohesively with on-site staff to improve patient status. By doing so, the eCare system provides an extra set of eyes and ears and ensures an added layer of safety, enabling a patient's care plan to prevent a medical crisis, instead of responding to one. For on-site caregivers, in-room help is available at the push of a button. The eCare system is based on eICU, a technology developed by Visicu (Baltimore, MD, USA), currently used in about 200 hospitals throughout the United States.

"The command center in Wilmington will operate between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m. weekdays and around the clock on weekends and holidays,” said James Xinis, president of Calvert Memorial Hospital. "This raises the level of care available locally. Other hospitals who have used similar programs show a decrease in mortality rates by as much as 25 percent.”

Under the Maryland eCare program, a critical care doctor will oversee overnight care for as many as 150 patients and provide guidance to on-site nurses. Since inception in 2008, eCare hospitals in Maryland have been coordinating staff, securing data lines and working closely with the team at Christiana Care to ready their facilities for seamless inclusion of remote monitoring. Calvert Memorial hospital, the first of the planned six facilities in the program, will work most closely with eCare on nights, weekends and holidays, times typically difficult for local specialists to remain on-site.

Related Links:
Calvert Memorial Hospital
Christiana Care Hospital
Visicu