Visicu公司开发出增强重症监护系统

一种远程重症监护系统允许医院设计高质量的操作有效以及经济的“广系统”重症监护方案。

尽管重症监护室患者需要24小时特殊监护，但是大多数重症监护室缺乏专门训练的医生或者重症监护专家来完成这项任务。在美国有重症监护人员的储备，但是只有6000人不到有实际操作经验。而通过远程医学和计算机监测器连接到重症监护室的医疗设施，新系统能够提过所需的监护。这种设施配备重症监护专家领导的小组，能够监测与护理数以百计的患者，就象空中交通管制系统能够监测数以百计的飞机一样。该系统叫做eICU，能够提供持续监测，使得医生能够紧急处理；并且帮助医生获得正确处理患者的信息，从而使得他们工作更加迅速。

eICU系统是由Visicu公司研制开发的，该公司是约翰霍普金斯医院两位重症监护专家于1998年创办的。该公司为那些打算提高ICU系统质量的大型多医院保健系统服务，这些机构使用eICU系统对患者进行实时音频和视频监测。

Kaleida保健系统cICU操作主任Colleen Dowd指出：“这项技术并不意味着可以代替医生的实际操作以及床边护理，但是为处于紧急事件的患者提供安全网络来支持现场的医生，这将提高患者的医疗护理质量。”

Enhanced Intensive Care System
 
A remote intensive care system allows hospitals to create a system-wide critical care program designed to improve quality, operating efficiency, and economic performance.

Although patients in an intensive care unit (ICU) require round-the-clock specialized care, most ICUs do not have specially trained doctors, or intensivists, available to do this. There is a shortage of intensivists in the United States, where there are fewer than 6,000 actively practicing. With a remote facility linked via telemedicine and computer monitors to hospital ICU rooms, the new system can provide the required care. The facility is staffed with an intensivist-led team that can monitor and care for hundreds of patients much like air traffic controllers monitor hundreds of planes. Called eICU, the system provides constant surveillance, provides the patient with immediate physician access, and arms the physician with the patient information needed to make the right decisions and make them quickly.

The eICU system was developed by Visicu, Inc. (Baltimore, MD, USA), a company founded in 1998 by two intensivist doctors from Johns Hopkins Medicine (also in Baltimore). The company markets the system to large, multi-hospital healthcare systems that want to improve the quality of their ICU care. One such system is Kaleida Health (Buffalo, NY, USA), which uses the eICU system for real-time audio and video monitoring of patients in the ICU units of two suburban hospitals.

“This technology is not meant to replace the human touch or bedside care, but supports the onsite clinicians by offering a safety net to patients in the event of an emergency,” noted Colleen Dowd, director of cICU operations at Kaleida Health. “The result will be improved patient care.”