VitalStream™ – Ushering in the wireless era of hemodynamic monitoring

Medical practitioners know that even a brief hypotensive event can harm a patient. This is why the ICU employs continuous hemodynamic monitoring to catch the earliest signs of such events and enable prompt intervention.

However, studies have found that post-operative patients returning to the general ward are still at risk of acute hypotensive events leading to cardiac arrest, and a high proportion of such events are not picked up. This highlights the need for continuous hemodynamic monitoring beyond the critical care wards, a need that can be met by wireless hemodynamic monitoring.

The scale of the problem

Multiple studies have highlighted the ongoing need for beat-by-beat hemodynamic monitoring for postoperative patients in recovery.

In 2014 the New England Journal of Medicine published a study of 10,010 non-cardiac surgery patients over the age of 45 in 135 hospitals in 23 countries, which found that the median duration of hypotension increased tenfold the day after surgery, showing that the days post-surgery are critical.

Systemic hypotension is the most common abnormality detected in the 15 minutes to 24 hours leading up to cardiac arrest, according to a study of 638 cases in Australia, New Zealand and the UK.

A study by Daniel Sessler et al, published in Anesthesiology in 2017, found that the ratio of hypotension to postoperative myocardial infarction and death shot up by nearly 300% from ICU and PACU levels in the four days on the wards after surgery.

Clearly the absence of beat-by-beat hemodynamic monitoring on the wards post-surgery is putting patient’s lives at risk.

The benefits of wireless hemodynamic monitoring

Patients in recovery are typically monitored every four hours when a nurse carries out routine observations. This leaves a lot of time for acute hypotensive events to occur unnoticed. Another study by Sessler et al in 2019 showed that when patients’ blood pressure was spot checked every four hours, 47% of the hypotensive events picked up by beat-by-beat monitoring were missed.

Until recently, continuous monitoring has not been practical on the wards because of the cost of the machines and the discomfort patients feel in being wired up to them. Wireless patient monitoring is solving this problem, both in terms of cost and comfort.

MedTech innovator Caretaker Medical is leading the way with its VitalStream™ wireless patient monitoring platform. A wearable, wrist-mounted unit utilizing AI and a finger cuff continuously measures vital signs and streams them wirelessly to a monitor. Patients find it comfortable and convenient, and nurses don’t have to contend with wires and tubes as they attend to their patients.

Importantly, VitalStream™ modernizes monitoring workflows with its ability to wirelessly stream ICU level data and waveforms to central monitoring, EMR and secure clouds. With the data sent to the cloud, doctors can now keep an eye on their patients from anyplace and anytime on any wireless enabled device.

The level of clinical accuracy, time-savings, patient comfort and cost make VitalStream™ a solution that can streamline hospital processes, enable medical staff to do their job more efficiently, safely and with less stress, and lead to better outcomes for millions of patients. It is, in short, ushering in the wireless era of patient monitoring.

For more information on VitalStream™, contact Caretaker today!