eICU Telehealth Data Allows Clinical Analytics For Researchers

Telehealth is mostly viewed as a quick way to review a skin rash with a physician through video conferencing or text messaging, not as a source of rich and comprehensive patient data for clinical analytics.  But a new project coming out of MIT hopes to change that.  In conjunction with the Philips Hospital to Home e-ICU telemedicine program, the Laboratory of Computational Physiology at the MIT Institute for Medical Engineering and Science will dive into data on more than 100,000 patients who have experienced a stay in intensive care, allowing scientists to analyze what happens in the e-ICU in extraordinary detail.

“Researchers are always looking for better, more accurate and comprehensive data that enables a holistic representation of the patient experience,” said Leo Anthony Celi of MIT. “The quality and resolution of the data Philips has been collecting in the critical care domain is unprecedented. This kind of access will provide researchers with data that will enable investigations otherwise unimaginable.”

e-ICU care is becoming more popular with organizations that can survey a large number of patients from a centralized command center, allowing for speedier alerts when a patient’s condition changes, often backed by predictive analytics infrastructure.   At the Sisters of Mercy Health System, Wendy Diebert, NR, BSN, Vice President of Telehealth Services, explains that remote monitoring of ICU patients from a single location allows the health system to keep tabs on more patients across a large geographic region...