Penn State Health Implements AI-Driven Virtual ICU to Lessen Physician Burnout

Aiming to address the problems resulting from clinician shortages and capacity issues during the COVID-19 pandemic, Penn State Health has partnered with CLEW Medical to launch a virtual intensive care unit (vICU) powered by an artificial intelligence (AI) cloud-based platform.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the demand for hospital beds increased dramatically, as did the need for provider assistance. This has led to high levels of physician burnout and large numbers of healthcare workers quitting their jobs. 

Clinician burnout increased from 31.8 percent to 40.4 percent during the COVID-19 pandemic, a JAMA Network Open study found. 

Penn State Health provides care to patients and communities in 29 central Pennsylvania counties. It includes five hospitals and more than 3,000 physicians and direct care providers at 90-plus medical offices.

Using a cloud-based tele-ICU platform created by CLEW, Penn State Health has created a vICU program. CLEW Medical supplies AI analytics platforms to assist providers in clinical decision-making.

The new virtual ICU program began in late September with 174 adult ICU and intermediate care beds in the Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center and the Penn State Health St. Joseph Medical Center.

The CLEW ICU system aims to assist clinicians while lowering costs and enhancing provider experience.

"I am eager and excited to see how CLEW's software will perform with the goal of augmenting and streamlining the already exceptional care being provided at the bedside," said Will Hazard, MD, medical director of vICU at Penn State Health, in a press release.

Granted clearance from the US Food and Drug Administration last year, the platform leverages AI algorithms and machine-learning models to determine which ICU patients are the most and least likely to deteriorate. It uses data from various sources, including the EHR, and alerts clinicians about possible deterioration up to eight hours in advance, according to a previous company press release.

"The new vICU service will expand the range of virtual care services we offer, including the region's first Home Recovery Care program," said Chris LaCoe, DBA, RN, vice president of virtual health for Penn State Health, in the current press release. "CLEW's ability to support all major EHR and patient monitoring platforms means we will be able to easily extend the service to other hospitals and health systems, regardless of their specific configurations." 

The health system plans to expand the vICU to Penn State Health Lancaster Medical Center and Penn State Health Holy Spirit Medical Center, and to other facilities that contract for the vICU services.

Various methods for predicting and measuring levels of physician burnout have emerged recently.

In August, researchers from Washington University in St. Louis created a deep-learning model that used clinical actions and timestamps from EHR logs to predict physician burnout.

Further, research published in March shows that female physicians are at a higher risk for clinician burnout from EHR documentation than their male counterparts.