This morning, I was reading yesterday's Straits Times (dated 18 Feb 2010) when I chanced upon an article (page B3) about an electronic Intensive Care Unit (eICU) system bought by Philips Healthcare two years ago to monitor 6,000 or about 10 per cent of ICU beds in the United States, resulting in a big drop in the number of deaths in ICUs which generally account for about half the deaths in hospitals.
An eICU team comprising one doctor and two nurses can monitor as many as 150 ICU patients across several locations at any one time and this scenario could well typify the materialisation of Singapore's vision to become a regional medical hub by exporting its expertise without its doctors leaving town.
The software monitors the vital signs of the patients and can see trends that occur over several hours, alerting the local hospital team that a patient might need attention, even before alarms in the ICU are set off.
For Singapore, since the technology provides information and surveillance in real-time, each public health cluster could have one eICU monitoring all the ICU beds in different hospitals.
Personally, for me, I have never doubted the high quality of medical care available in Singapore...its the high cost that scares me. Sure, the eICU will add another layer of protection and care for patients but how many ordinary working-class citizens and Permanent Residents will be able to afford it.
Well, that's a feedback for our extremely highly-paid politicians to consider and 'to lose some hair over'...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Linking back to education, I am wondering if monitoring so many patients over an eICU system is the same as monitoring a few patients locally. Are the skills involved similar? I doubt. So are doctors of today trained to work with eICU systems?
ReplyDeleteDo doctor trainers face similar challenges as the ones we language teachers face - in terms of the student profile and characteristics(DNs vs DIs), and the lag that some of us have in terms of use and adoption of technology?
Dear ChiaYen
ReplyDeleteThank you for posting your comment.
This eICU system is an Early Warning/Alert system where the Headquarter Station is the Main Station where all the medical expertise resides. Based on the links to the medical data of the patients at the subsidiary eICU stations, the HQ station is envisaged to be able to diagnose the cause/s of a particular trend of (medical) readings obtained eg a falling blood pressure can mean that the patient is dehydrating and the HQ team can then alert the staff at the subsidiary eICU station to increase the fluid intake for the patient, warding off possible kidney failure.
I will presume that when this system is finally in use in Singapore, the manning staff would be selectively selected and would have received the training required.
Cheers.
Wilson