Technology
Advancing connected care in an evolving landscape
Approximately 30% of all the world’s data volume is now being generated by the healthcare industry. So, how can digital technologies advance connected care, improve patient outcomes, and increase efficiency in healthcare? Stephen Russell provides an insight.
There are many challenges in healthcare today: staff shortages, reduced time for care, complicated workflows, rising costs, and an increasing demand for more complex care. The concept of “connected care” with digital technologies has been put forward as one way to help address these challenges. But all too often the focus is on connectivity alone; for example, accessing an electronic patient record or linking wireless medical devices. But connected care should be just that, “connected” and “care”. It is important to continuously explore new possibilities for connectivity that leverage integration, technology, focusing on enhancing care, lowering costs and increasing workflow efficiency. Seamless integration of new technology
into a hospital’s existing infrastructure should deliver vital information and clinical insights directly to clinicians when and where they need it, including at the patient bedside, and support the communication and collaboration needed to use that information to drive improvement in outcomes.
The healthcare data explosion According to RBC Capital Markets, approximately 30% of all the world’s data volume is now being generated by the healthcare industry and, by 2025, the compound annual growth rate for health data will be 36%. This growth rate is substantially faster than for other industries such as manufacturing, financial services, and media and entertainment.1
The average patient
generates at least 80 megabytes of clinical data each year, encompassing sensor readings, clinical notes, lab tests, medical images, and medication lists.2
Each patient in an intensive
care unit generates thousands of data-points per day.3 The growth in the use of digital technology is furthering the capability to acquire ever more clinical patient data: from periodic, continuous, and remote patient monitoring; to precision diagnostics; to wearables and the Internet-of- Things. According to research from security
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company, Zingbox, in a typical hospital in the US, there are already an average of 10 to 15 connected medical devices per patient bed.4 This is understandable and justifiable, since,
despite already capturing significant amounts of patient data, we may have only just scratched the surface; it has been estimated that, from brain activity to muscle performance, the human body produces two terabytes worth of data on a given day.5
To help make sense of this
sometimes overwhelming data, guidance and decision-support from early warning scores to cutting edge artificial intelligence also continue to be the focus of investigation and innovation. However, there is emerging evidence that the human element, the clinical workflows and the way in which clinicians and hospital staff communicate and collaborate in executing these workflows, is critical to turn this data and guidance into coordinated care that improves patient outcomes.
Vital signs, early warning scores, and patient deterioration As an example, it has been estimated that patient monitors represent 19% of connected medical devices in today’s hospitals in the US.6
These are used to collect some of the
most routine clinical data in a hospital but, at the same time, some of the most important: a patient’s vital signs (including pulse rate, respiration rate, systolic blood pressure and temperature). According to NICE Clinical Guideline CG50, vital signs are fundamental to clinical assessment, risk evaluation, and prevention of patient deterioration. Patients who are, or become, acutely unwell in hospital may receive suboptimal care. This may be because their deterioration is not recognised, or because, despite indications of clinical deterioration, it is not appreciated, or not acted upon sufficiently rapidly. Communication and documentation are often poor, experience might be lacking
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