Intensive Care Unit (ICU) is the last protective line of hospital and the death. In order to save every ICU patient, the hospital has given large human and material resources to ensure 24-hour monitoring of patient physical signs. Recently, Philips developed a remote ICU monitoring system with researchers from Emory Healthcare and Macquarie University for a purpose of further increasing survival rate of ICU patients.

In the cooperation, Emory Healthcare in Atlanta and Macquarie University in Sydney will apply the remote ICU monitoring system (eICU) developed by Philips simultaneously for real time monitoring. Through the system, the ICU patients in Atlanta will be cared by local ICU staff in the daytime and monitored by Australian professional healthcare staff at night. On one hand, the system will successfully create a 24-hour monitoring network for patients to ensure their safety, on the other hand, it avoids long time overnight work of local special care staff and medical experts and downsizes the possibility of medical malpractice resulting from overstrain.

Kevin Barrow from Philips said that with the increase of population, the demand for special care service will also grow. The three-party cooperation will provide a proactive and continuous special protection model, thus ensuring a better health service for patients on the premise of taking advantage of current resources to the greatest extent.

In fact, previous clinical investigation showed that in comparison with traditional ICU, survival rate of ICU patients in hospitals applying eICU technology increased by 26% and response rate of emergencies also increased about 20%. Researchers of Philips expect that the system will change modern clinical ICU model in the future.