Engineering news
Keith Erry, chief executive and co-founder of Isansys, oversees a demonstration of the company's wireless patient monitoring system
Vital signs of seriously ill young patients at Birmingham Children’s Hospital are being monitored continuously in real time with wireless sensors developed by Abingdon business Isansys Lifecare.
The project, called RAPID (Real-Time Adaptive & Predictive Indicator of Deterioration), uses biotelemetry and wireless sensors designed by Isansys Lifecare to collect real-time data on vital signs such as heart rate, breathing rate and oxygen levels.
This data is then analysed to predict when a child’s condition may be deteriorating, providing an early warning system that can be acted on immediately. The sensors include the Lifetouch; a small wireless bandage-like strip that can be fixed to the patient and continuously transmits the child’s heart signs.
The project, which Isansys says is the first of its type in the world, is jointly funded by a £1.8 million grant from the Wellcome Trust and the Department of Health, through the Health Innovation Challenge Fund. It is on plan to have recruited over 500 patients by April next year and 1,200 patients over the three year lifetime of the project. The RAPID programme is a collaboration between Birmingham Children’s Hospital, Isansys Lifecare, McLaren Applied Technologies, Aston University and the University of Birmingham.
Dr Heather Duncan, a consultant at Birmingham Children’s Hospital, said: “We don’t want any unavoidable cardiac arrest or death in hospitalised patients. Fortunately, those events are rare but we need to extend our monitoring to capture those events. It could be the difference between life and death.
“If you ask the children, they want wireless monitoring. They don’t want to be wired up. They want to walk around, they want to go to school, go to the playroom, go to the canteen, they want to be really mobile."
The Lifetouch sensor means the child does not need to be physically hooked up to a monitor and is free to play or be held by parents. It is one of the sensors comprising the Patient Status Engine (PSE), a multiple vital sign data capture and analysis system.
The data from the Lifetouch is transmitted via a low energy Bluetooth connection to the Isansys gateway located near to the bedside. The gateway provides a real-time display of the patient’s vital signs, analyses the data and wirelessly transmits the new clinical information into the Isansys server and from there to the McLaren Applied Technologies system, where the data analytics will run and which delivers the patient information to nurse and clinician dashboards.
Vital signs are normally recorded every one to four hours onto paper charts, but the new RAPID technology enables continuous monitoring and analysis of large amounts of data in real time. Isansys Lifecare said: "This will allow a more accurate prediction of a patient’s deterioration, which is expected to lead to faster and more targeted responses that can save lives and shorten hospital stays."
The wireless monitoring technology is expected to have wide applications across the NHS and could help to save money currently spent on expensive monitors and allow more patients to be treated at home. The large amounts of patient data it provides could also help researchers to find new and better treatments for a wide variety of conditions.
Keith Errey, chief executive and co-founder of Isansys, said: “Isansys isn’t just a technology company and we’re not just making medical devices here. We’re creating a platform and a service model that will change the face of healthcare as we see it.
“The exciting thing is, the more work we do on this, the more we recognise how important and profound this new data-driven approach to healthcare is.”
Isansys developed a prototype of the Lifetouch sensor for paediatric use with the help of a £100,000 Smart award from Innovate UK in 2012. It has also won a £1 million Small Business Research Initiative contract to further develop the Patient Status Engine for the NHS.
The Minister for Life Sciences George Freeman said: “These technologies have the potential to help the system bring benefits to more and more patients so fewer people have to go to hospital, have to queue, and have to go through the system.
“We can develop more healthcare from home, more telemetry, more Skype, more wireless and allow patients with non-acute conditions to be monitored more conveniently and to take more responsibility for their conditions.”