ehCOS SmartICU Enters Its Final Phase at the Virgen del Rocío University Hospital

NTTDATA and NTTD announce the start of the final piloting phase of the ehCOS SmartICU solution ehCOS SmartICU has already been implemented in four intensive care units of Virgen del Rocio University Hospital, where 224 healthcare professionals have treated 762 patients with its help. This phase sees the incorporation of 22 new beds in the Traumatology and Burns intensive care unit, as well as the first testing of the predictive alerts system developed by hospital clinicians and engineers.

Clinical findings show that early medical intervention can lead to effective recoveries for ICU patients suffering from serious life-threatening illnesses or external injuries. Our solution uses real-time patient data to predict a potential complication hours before an event and then sends alerts to bedside PCs and doctors’ mobile devices. This will give the medical staff time to carefully decide the best intervention to avoid complications by studying the patient’s history and latest vital signs”, says Dr. Tsuyoshi Kitani, EVP at NTT DATA.

The learning ease and user friendliness of the system promotes the growth of its adoption

With two months to go before the completion of the pilot phase, ehCOS SmartICU has already been implemented in four intensive care units of the hospital, where 224 healthcare professionals have treated 762 patients with its help.

Gone are the days when the data of critical patients connected to numerous monitoring devices were disintegrated in their medical records, like a black hole sucking in the information.

This solution developed by NTTDATA, NTT Data and an experimented team of clinicians of ICUs at Virgen del Rocio University Hospital, gives way to the creation of a smarter digital ICU”, explains Rafael Garrido, Managing Partner at NTTDATA.
The automatic registration of information from the devices and systems connected to the patient allows professionals to dedicate more time to their care and attention. This significantly increases patient safety by providing doctors and nurses with second-by-second clinical information of the patient’s episode in the ICU. Furthermore, it also allows access to the patient’s retrospective information located in their files, providing the healthcare provider with greater support for more accurate decision-making.

The system was developed by a joint team of health professionals and engineers, who have managed to create an intuitive and user-friendly tool that ensures a quick and easy adoption process. With ehCOS SmartICU, new users only need a few hours of training to start using it on their own and integrate it into their daily workflow.

An alert system will predict septic shock, hypotension and hypoxemia episodes before they occur

Septic shock, hypoxemia and hypotension are the most common critical episodes in ICUs and have the highest mortality rates.

In order to prevent these episodes that put the intensive care patients at higher risk, they have developed a system capable of giving alerts for these situations hours in advance, allowing health care personnel to adapt the patient’s treatment to avoid or minimize the criticality of their condition. This is achieved by permanently collecting the patient data captured by the monitoring devices, with the incorporation of big data techniques and artificial intelligence algorithms, capable of modeling the clinical knowledge provided by the ICU professionals.

Thanks to these early alerts, they can also apply policies to improve the efficiency and organization of the ICU setting, as well as optimize the use of physical and human resources while the quality of patient care and safety improves.

An additional benefit of using these alerts is that it provides useful training for young doctors and nurses. In real time, it can objectify the importance of early and intensive treatment of the initial variables that most influence the appearance of a harmful event, in order to positively change the course of the process,” explains Dr. Francisco Murillo, head of the Intensive Care Services at the Virgen del Rocio University Hospital and principal investigator of the project.

Patient Monitoring from any Point Within Reach

A further development introduced in this phase of the pilot is the launch of a mobile application that will enable clinicians to follow the progress of critically ill patients from their mobile devices. Through it, they can access real-time patient monitoring data, episode information, lab results, status of medication administration and history of losses, and manage their transfer if necessary.