SensiumVitals is a new wireless early warning system designed to improve patient outcomes and shorten hospital stays. The system enables early intervention by continuously monitoring vital signs of heart rate, respiration rate and axillary temperature every two minutes and alerting the nursing staff when pre-set thresholds are exceeded. Based on a disposable, wearable patch that monitors patients outside of high acuity areas – the system is capable of notifying clinicians of changes in patients’ vital signs, allowing intervention before the condition worsens. This should also result in improved patient outcomes, shorter hospital stays, and overall lower treatment costs. It is currently in trials at St. James’s University Hospital in Leeds and Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham.
“Patients can be tracked and monitored unobtrusively and continuously in real time when wearing the patch,” said Anthony Sethill, CEO of Sensium. “A preliminary study of SensiumVitals monitored patients reported that hospital stays were shortened with additional cost savings on overall treatment.”
SensiumVitals communicates the patient measurements using a very low power radio which is said to be more power-efficient than Wi-Fi or Bluetooth solutions.
The SensiumVitals digital patch is an FDA-cleared, lightweight (weighing only 1/2 ounce) device designed for in-hospital use, particularly in general care, post-surgical areas, and emergency rooms; it can be easily attached to the patient’s chest by means of two self-adhesive conventional ECG electrodes.
SensiumVitals communicates the patient measurements using a very low power radio which is said to be more power-efficient than Wi-Fi or Bluetooth solutions.The solution is also easily integrated with existing hospital technology via a router-like “bridge” to the hospital IT system that reports to a nurses’ station, central monitoring station or any point-of-care web-enabled device, including hand-held devices for instant communications. The patch is discarded when the patient is discharged, removing the need for cleaning and sterilization to prevent cross-contamination.
When the patch is activated, it records respiratory and ECG activity in a sequential and cyclical fashion. Once a physiological signal is fully acquired, it is processed by its associated embedded algorithm inside the inbuilt processing unit, which results in transmission of the average values, i.e. heart rate as beats per minute (bpm) or respiratory rate as breaths per minute (brpm) to the nearest bridge for onward transmission to the central monitoring system. In addition, the system is embedded with a noise-detection strategy capable of automatically detecting and discarding erroneous calculations that arise from respiratory and ECG signals severely corrupted by electrical or motion artifacts.