Enabling real-time communication between medical devices

Increasing demands on patient monitoring

Nurses are the final safety net in hospital care. This is also reflected in the nurse-to-patient ratios that hospitals are required to operate under. California, for example, is the only U.S. state that mandates specific nurse-to-patient ratios for every hospital unit, ranging from 1:1 or 1:2 in intensive care units to 1:6 in post-partum care. These ratios must apply at all times, not just on average across a shift. Despite this regulatory guidance, a nurse’s situational awareness can change rapidly depending on the complexity of protocols required for certain patients.

Consider a patient in critical condition undergoing hemodynamic monitoring alongside titrated infusions. In such cases, a nurse will need to continuously monitor blood pressure through an intra-arterial catheter while administering multiple pharmacological substances. Although the use of smart infusion pumps and electronic health records have reduced complexity, real-time assessment remains essential for patient safety, particularly when vasopressors are administered.

In these scenarios, a 1:1 nurse-to-patient ratio is mandatory. However, fragmented handovers between shifts, varying concentrations of pharmacological substances and monitoring of multiple pumps for the same patients can significantly increase the cognitive load that the nurse is operating under. 

In addition, as population ages, the percentage of older people being admitted to hospitals continues to rise alongside the pressure to maintain the nurse-to-patient ratio. This trend is exacerbating the cost pressures already on hospitals and driving the need for greater efficiency.

Enabling real-time device connectivity

To address this, parts of the medical device industry are working toward enabling real-time, bidirectional communication between devices. The goal of the RTX next generation patient monitoring platform was to support this endeavor with a novel wireless system design. This RTX platform has since been architected to maintain visibility of the data that is being generated through all the equipment surrounding the patient in a low-latency, deterministic and real-time manner, to facilitate fully informed intervention when needed. 

RTX has implemented a technology that will allow a diverse base of medical devices to sustain a real-time low-latency bidirectional command and control between their respective products wirelessly. This enhanced connectivity combined with increased processing at the edge of the hospital networks, allows to support automated or assisted decision-making, particularly in situations where patient conditions deteriorate rapidly or where multiple patients must be monitored simultaneously. This is not intended to replace clinical oversight but rather ensure that nurse's priority in patient comfort and care is placed above the management of surrounding tools and sensors.

Improving workflows and patient safety

RTX is now on the verge of delivering this new generation of an ultra-low latency wireless communication platform to over 2,800 hospitals in the US. The platform can be deployed rapidly and cost-effectively, overlayed on top of pre-existing systems in a hospital such as ethernet or WiFi 6E/7. This cutting-edge technology is currently being validated in clinical trials at a leading major hospital in the United States. It is expected to improve efficiency, particularly for patients that are ambulatory and need to be continuously monitored with the help of non-invasive wearables or patient worn devices.