Philadelphia Hospital Deploys Remote Patient Monitoring Senor in ICUs

Temple University Hospital, located in Philadelphia, is implementing a remote patient monitoring sensor at the 100 beds within its intensive care units.

Developed by medical technology company Masimo, the Centroid sensor continuously monitors patient position, orientation, activity, and respiration rate. It alerts clinicians to potential pressure injuries and falls, enabling care teams to prevent these adverse events. The sensor also detects chest movements to provide respiration rate measures continuously.

Centroid pairs with the Root Patient Monitoring and Connectivity Platform using Bluetooth, which can display the data in various formats for clinicians to examine. All Temple University Hospital ICU beds will be equipped with Centroid and Root, including the trauma, cardiothoracic, neurological, and medical respiratory ICUs.

"When we trialed Centroid, we found it helped our teams prioritize workflows more effectively, with an increased focus on following turn protocols and decreased incidence of pressure injuries," said Angelo Venditti, DNP, executive vice president for patient care and chief nursing executive at the hospital's parent organization Temple Health, in the news release.

Centroid allows care teams to customize alarm zones to help avoid potentially harmful patient positions. The sensor provides a pressure-risk algorithm that takes into account cumulative pressure exposure time, which can help clinicians not only identify if a patient has been turned but also if the new position may still be resulting in pressure risk to the same tissue.

Temple Health and Masimo's relationship began in 2008 with a pulse oximetry technology partnership. The health system has since implemented several Masimo products, including Patient SafetyNet, a centralized remote patient supplemental monitoring platform.

"We are pleased to expand our relationship with Masimo, which has already proven itself as a key technology partner in our efforts to improve patient outcomes," Venditti said.

Hospitals and health systems increasingly rely on remote monitoring to keep track of patient care needs.

Reno, Nevada-based Renown Health recently partnered with BioIntelliSense to integrate its BioSticker wearable device into its clinical remote monitoring services to enhance in-hospital and at-home care.

Both clinicians (80 percent) and hospital leaders (87 percent) agree that the quality of patient care would improve if clinical and non-clinical support staff had access to mobile devices and healthcare apps, according to a report published in 2021, which detailed survey responses from more than 500 senior-level hospital leaders, including clinical and IT leaders.

Further, the report states that 77 percent of leaders said they would implement enterprise-grade mobile devices in their organizations over the next year.

Tech companies making inroads into healthcare are also taking note of this trend.

Last October, Amazon announced that it plans to expand Alexa's capabilities in healthcare facilities. The new capabilities aim to allow hospital staff to communicate more efficiently with patients and mitigate the need to have patients press a call button to summon nurses multiple times.