Kauvery Hospital has proposed to adopt a wearable device to remotely monitor patients shifted from intensive care unit to the wards.

A wireless biosensor patch that is attached to the patient’s chest to monitor vital signs such as the ECG, respiratory rate temperature, oxygen levels and issues alerts, enabling doctors to treat the patient in an emergency.

“Generally, ICU patients are continuously monitored during their stay and once we see improvement in their condition, they are shifted to the ward. In a normal ward, their vitals are monitored once every four or eight hours,” said N. Sridhar, consultant intensivist, Critical Care.

However, this meant that any deterioration between the checks could be missed. With the addition of advanced machine learning algorithms, the device would be able to predict such deterioration, he said.

The hospital has partnered with Life Signs as the tech provider.

At present, all patients shifted from ICU are remotely monitored till discharge. Persons requiring critical intervention are shifted to the ICU for advanced monitoring and therapy.

Deeksha Senguttuvan, head, digital strategy, said the aim was to reduce incidence of unanticipated cardiac arrest in the ward.

Hospital co-founder and executive director Aravindan Selvaraj said the hospital chain aims at incorporating this technology spanning across all their units.

Founder and managing director Manivannan Selvaraj recalled that the hospital was the first to use bluetooth oxygen saturation monitoring of COVID-19 patients.