An article regarding a trial of wearable tech being used to monitor patients’ vital signs in hospital.
What a fantastic advance.
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Good, but the only “game-changer” from this article is that it has been rolled out to ALL wards in a small Qld hospital in a town with a population of about 1,000.
The technology has been available in Qld hospitals. Last year Mr Z was hooked up to telemetry monitors that allowed him to wander the wards and, provided he didn’t leave the cardiac unit, all his vital signs (HR, respiration, oxygen levels, ECG type info etc) were all being captured into the computer system and displayed in real time on his monitor. Any issues triggered an alarm, but it was usually he had displaced one of the sensors. He showered with it, slept with it etc.
I have had both systems - a similar telemetry monitor (4 years ago) and the waking every hour. I got married 4 months previous and still felt like I was telling lies when I had to give my new name. Well, after being woken every hour for 5 days and asked for “full name, date of birth” I finally got used to it. I just wished they could tattoo that on my hand so I didn’t have to identify myself every hour. I much preferred the telemetry system.
Hopefully it will roll out to more hospitals, but I suspect there will also be a reduction in nursing staff as it takes less labour to monitor patients.
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