Dive Brief:
- A California hospital has begun requiring certain patients to use a wearable remote monitoring device as part of its internal safety protocols.
- Chino Valley Medical Center, which is using the Leaf Patient Monitoring System, is leveraging the devices to prevent pressure ulcers. The device's sensors monitor patient movement in bed, and that hospital staff know when a patient needs to be turned to prevent pressure ulcer formation.
- A recent clinical trial showed that the use of the sensor increased compliance with hospital turn procedures from the existing rate of 64% to 98%.
Dive Insight:
Wearables are quite trendy, but their use in hospital settings to date has been extremely limited. Chino Valley's success at boosting compliance with turning protocols, however, is likely to bring new attention to the possibilities for improving patient management with these soon-to-be ubiquitous sensor-driven devices.
Expect to see increased competition among vendors offering sensor-driven patient care solutions to hospitals. Vendor Leaf Healthcare, which is piloting its technology with several hospitals, including El Camino Hospital and the Boise, Idaho VA Medical Center, already has competitors such as smart-bed company Bam Labs, whose product biometrically validates bed position to a cloud-based monitoring platform. And this is likely to be just the beginning of hospital use of patient sensors.