Non-invasive Monitoring System for Hospital and Residential Patients

The smart hospital beds market is at an emerging stage due to a few factors such as increasing demand for hospital comfort, the need to optimize available care resources, rising healthcare spending, ongoing technological advancements, and the growing prevalence of chronic diseases.

Pardo is currently immersed in the development of a new generation of beds for hospital use through the integration of 4.0 technologies and the research of new materials with antiviral properties.

In a first phase, the project “Non-invasive monitoring system for hospital and residential patients” has been launched . This project, led by Pardo and in collaboration with the Hernán Cortés Hospital Group and Inycom technology, investigates a new non-intrusive, portable and automatic monitoring system, based on wireless and/or contactless technology, which allows its use on a hospital bed or residential center to control patients and quickly detect any change that could lead to a risk situation in a fast, effective and safe way.

A continuous and real-time monitoring that performs a morphological characterization and offers a series of advantages such as improved efficiency in triage, helping to prioritize needs, the use of resources allocated to the care and surveillance of patients or assisted persons, or the detection of risks not detectable with the naked eye in hospital and residential processes.

Thus, the project revolves around the implementation of a new generation of sensors located in Pardo’s hospital beds which, in combination with the application of Artificial Intelligence techniques (chromatic changes, movements, etc.), measure parameters such as cardiorespiratory rate, oxygen saturation or blood pressure. The use of these sensors also detects, through postural AI algorithms, whether the patient is moving or standing still, which will make it possible, for example, to minimize the appearance of pressure ulcers, which is especially important for bedridden users with long-term stays.

All these data are stored in the bed and read on a screen located in the bed, which, in successive phases of the project, will in turn communicate with the hospital’s HIS and with the healthcare personnel’s devices (cell phone or tablet). In addition, the bed would be equipped with alarms that would warn of changes in the patient’s condition depending on the pathology.

Once this information is collected, a model will be developed to analyze the relationships between the different data obtained in order to more accurately predict the recovery processes.

The project also includes the development of solutions for predictive maintenance (a system of alerts that anticipates the need for repairs or replacement of bed parts), design solutions to improve patient mobilization maneuvers, the incorporation of an interactive map of the hospital floor plan on the bed screen, and different types of light indicators.

The objective of this development is twofold. On the one hand, to provide health services with an automatic monitoring system that reduces the need for the presence of health personnel to focus their efforts on patient treatment and emergencies, thus minimizing the workload associated with the management and control of hospitalized people.

And, on the other hand, the medium-long term potential of the system, since, in the future, it could be adapted to other uses, from home care centers to field hospitals. It could also be configured for specific diseases, including specific measurements of other physiological variables.

In the current phase of research and proof of concept of this contactless registration system, a clinical study is being carried out at the HC Miraflores Hospital in Zaragoza through the implementation of a first hospital bed in operation that already incorporates the aforementioned sensorization technologies.

This bed records the most relevant clinical data that allow us to know the patient’s physical, mental and emotional state (patient’s weight and constants), as well as the movements and positions of the bed. These data are being tested and validated by the healthcare staff and are intended to achieve a more individualized monitoring of each patient and an optimization of treatments.

In addition, this is achieved in a non-invasive way, without the need for contact with the patient, unlike conventional methods, which means that the patient’s mobility and comfort are not limited. This system is adaptable to different beds and patients depending on the situation and needs.

Of course, the project has a restrictive and protected access to all patient information, in accordance with the current data protection law.