Infection Control

New ICU technology could improve IC processes

Briefings on Infection Control, October 1, 2009

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Imagine you could interact with multiple patients, diagnose and treat their illnesses, administer drugs, and even ensure that medical staff members are following IC best practices 24 hours per day, seven days per week, all without getting out of your chair.

This is the basic premise of the eICU, an electronic subdivision of the ICU at Alegent Health in Omaha, NE. Mark Kestner, MD, senior vice president and chief medical officer at Alegent Health, likens it to an air traffic control tower. Nurses and physicians man an off-site location filled with two-way cameras linked to ICUs in three metropolitan hospitals and one rural hospital in the system.

Six nurses in the eICU routinely manage 15–20 patients each, in conjunction with on-site ICU staff members. A physician handles high-risk patients, and Alegent recently added a pharmacist to monitor antimicrobial activity.

The software built into the eICU not only feeds real time data for roughly 100 patients, including vital signs, laboratory tests, cultures, and pharmacy data; it also sorts the information and sets off alerts if there are concerns with a patient. Doctors and nurses in the eICU can also alert bedside medical staff members if a patient needs emergency care.

“What it does is it frees up the bedside staff because they know that certain elements of information are being sorted and addressed and that they can then be more available for the immediate needs of the patients or the routine bedside needs of the patient,” Kestner says. But from an IC perspective, it also provides a window to monitor compliance and effectively implement infection prevention bundles in a unit that is notoriously battling infections.

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