ICU mortality has dropped by up to 20 percent in ICU units throughout Northwell Health.

This is but one of several improvements experienced by New York State’s largest health care system, with the implementation of Philips Virtual Hospital Services portfolio, explained Dr. Purna Prasad, vice president and chief technology officer for Northwell during a Philips roundtable discussion on Tuesday, March 6 at HIMSS 2018 in Las Vegas, noting that continuous care from the beginning is essential for enhancing these outcomes.

“We need to get the pulse of the patient before they come into the geographic area of the hospitals. Hospitals are hosts of sick people,” he said. “Preventative care pays off not only financially but also from the health quality point of view. How do we basically start monitoring a patient that we’ve picked up in the parking lot or in the house or as they’re walking to the ICU because they cannot breathe? In the ICU, the nurse to nurse pressure is always a challenge. How do we use technology so that there is a third set of eyes that can provide care?"

Critically ill patients in Northwell ICUs are monitored through Philips eICU program, which offers telehealth bedside support.

The health system has also implemented Philips telestroke program to create collaboration among telehealth centers, stroke care teams, neurologists and ED clinicians to manage care for patients during time-sensitive stroke phases.

Further support is garnered through the use of IntelliSpace eCare Manager, which aggregates structured and unstructured data and integrates EHR information to provide comprehensive views of ICU units.

Such innovations, in addition to ICUS, have also impacted other areas of Northwell hospitals, doubling, for instance, both the numbers of organ donation referrals and patients in emergency departments assessed and prescribed the lifesaving, clot-busting drug, tPA.

The advent of these successes, especially within the ICU, has propelled Northwell to expand its relationship with Philips through the launch a pilot program that combines the enterprise’s general care solutions with its IntelliVue Guardian and wearable biosensor for ED patients.

The biosensor can be placed on patients upon picking them up for transport to hospitals, automatically and continuously measuring their heart and respiratory rate as well as posture.

It also detects falls with all information transmitted to the IntelliVue Guardian software for analysis.

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