With all the administrative and communication issues, “dealing” with Intensive Care Unit (ICU) can easily turn into a nightmare. The medical staff is not necessarily the one to blame; they are also under stress.

Aptima wants to make the experience a little less daunting, and is working with a team at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) to develop MyICU, a tablet app that helps better inform and involve patients and families in their healthcare and recovery. MyICU facilitates information sharing amongst the ICU team, patient and family, making sure everyone is on the same page.

MyICU features an easy-to-grasp interface organized around the core themes of CARE, TALK and LEARN.The application is accessed in the patient’s room, or remotely through any web browser. Whereas traditional patient portals are typically static repositories of complex medical information and are seldom used by family members, MyICU features an easy-to-grasp interface organized around the core themes of CARE, TALK and LEARN. From there family members can view the day-to-day summary of care and condition, post discussion questions to the ICU staff, schedule meetings, and learn more about the injury and how they can assist the recovery.

“In working closely with clinicians and patients, the Aptima team identified what was most important to both groups. MyICU was developed not to replace the face-to-face, but rather to augment and improve the flow of communications, helping keeping the patient and their loved ones informed and aligned with the care team,” Sylvain Bruni, Aptima’s Project Manager for MyICU and Lead for its Cognitive Systems Integration capability, said in a statement.

On the other hand, MyICU helps the clinical team provide more humane treatment to patients by understanding their lives prior to the injury. In the “About patient” section, clinicians can access information posted by family members to help the doctors and nurses relate in a more personalized manner, with the goal to return patient to that life.

MyICU is currently being successfully piloted in two ICUs at BIDMC, with a potential roll-out on additional floors and other hospitals this year. It is being developed as part of a grant awarded to Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, which funds innovations that improve healthcare and patient outcomes.