Adverse Events
“The $20B Problem”
What are Adverse Events, and How Bad Are They?
Adverse events (AEs) are defined as unintended injuries caused by medical mismanagement during hospitalization rather than the disease process.
According to a recent study New England Journal of Medicine, the likelihood of a patient experiencing at least one adverse event is roughly 25%, and with 32M hospitalizations per year, adverse events are becoming an increasingly prevalent issue in today's healthcare institutions.
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In a study by McDermott et al. (2017), one in three patients experienced an AE during their stay in a hospital. [1]
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4. McDermott, Kimberly, et al. “Trends in Hospital Inpatient Stays in the United States, 2005-2014”. Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project, June 2017. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
Adverse Events are Preventable
Recent studies have suggested that up to 60% of acute care AEs can be prevented with improved patient monitoring and an effective Early Warning System (EWS). In many cases, unusual fluctuations in a patient’s vital signs (e.g. blood pressure, respiration rate, pulse, etc.) often serve as an indication of an impending AE. However, nurses often lack remote knowledge into patient medical device data, making it difficult to identify the early biomarkers of an adverse event.
Challenges in Identifying Adverse Event Biomarkers
Data Collection and Availability
Nurses do not have remote knowledge into patient medical device data and often must manually assess medical instruments to determine patient status.
Further, the data often remains idle on a server until manually queried, or batch-processed into Electronic Medical Records intervals too infrequent for real-time patient care (e.g., every six hours).
Manual Transcription
For data to be ubiquitous, healthcare practitioners must manually assess the medical instruments and transcribe the data into the EMR.
This creates a large barrier to data ingestion in non-ICU wards, which have patient-to-nurse ratios of 5:1.
Manually recording of data may also give rise to the potential for transcription or timing errors that may have a negative impact on the patient at a later time.
Poor Interoperability
Unlike ICUs—which typically have interoperability by using a single vendor for a suite of devices—non-ICU units typically have devices from a variety of vendors each with different data outputs with little interoperability.
Darroch Medical Solutions is creating a unique platform to solve these problems.
Our Beat Analytics System and Wearable Monitor autonomously collect data at high frequencies (up to once per second), with consistent measurements. By presenting this data on the Lumori App, we remotely provide practitioners with a comprehensive understanding of the patient's current and historical medical device data.
With the implementation of the Beat Analytics System, we can deliver a potential 10x ROI for care facilities.
Beat Analytics System
The Beat Analytics System is a near real-time remote monitoring platform capable of integrating data from a variety of medical instruments and presenting nurses with a cohesive patient profile designed to support nurse decision making, enhance patient insight, and aid in the discovery of adverse events.
Lumori App
Lumori provides all of the Beat Analytics System’s data right in the palm of your hands. From the time a medical device makes a reading, the Lumori can display it in just ten seconds.
Wearable Monitor
Outpatient facilities are in dire need of a technology that can enable ubiquitous and continuous monitoring for medically complex residents. This can help prevent hospital readmissions and poor patient outcomes that can negatively affect the patient and facility.