GE Healthcare has debuted Portrait Mobile, a new continuous monitoring system designed to alert clinicians to early signs of patient deterioration and in turn, reduce adverse events and improve outcomes.

Providers worldwide use “spot-checks” every four to six hours to keep tabs on an estimated 65% of hospital patients and over 90% of post-acute care patients. This manual monitoring often misses many vital sign changes, including in respiratory rate, which is the highest-ranked variable in models that predict clinical deterioration in hospitals. According to a U.K. national audit, 57% of adults on wards go into cardiac arrest, compared to 5% of ICU patients, who are monitored continuously.

Portrait Mobile continuously and wirelessly monitors respiration rate, oxygen saturation and pulse rate for general ward and post-surgery patients, allowing caregivers to identify signs that cardiorespiratory complications or infectious diseases are developing. It can also be used when patients move around.

"The monitors deployed in lower acuity settings may need the capability to provide ICU-level monitoring, if required. At GE Healthcare, we call this FlexAcuity and have been investing in tools and technologies that enable hospitals to standardize patient monitors that can be flexibly deployed across their enterprise," Neal Sandy, general manager of monitoring solutions and patient care solutions at GE Healthcare, told HCB News.

Up to 90% of ward and post-surgery patients are not continuously monitored. The solution’s routable communications architecture allows hospitals to leverage their existing network infrastructure, reducing installation and maintenance costs.

The wireless and patient-worn sensors help preserve patient mobility, which allows visitors to interact with them more easily and relax knowing that monitoring is constant. The ability of patients to move around while being constantly monitored not only improves outcomes but may reduce length of stay and ICU admission. This, in turn, lowers costs and elevates patient satisfaction.

The system was developed at GE Healthcare’s Global Center of Excellence in Helsinki, Finland.

Additionally, the company upped its continuous monitoring care by integrating two new technologies designed by Medtronic onto its CARESCAPE patient monitoring platform. They include Microstream capnography (CO2), which indicates when a patient is declining, and INVOS regional oximetry (rSO2) technology for monitoring hemodynamic changes. The two are applicable in the ED, NICU/PICU, OR, ICU, Med-surg unit, recovery suite and for transport in between.

"In addition to further standardization of monitoring devices, we envision the future of patient monitoring to include the application of wireless patient-worn sensors, as earlier patient mobilization, particularly post-surgery, is a key indicator for recovery," said Sandy.

Portrait Mobile is CE marked and available in Europe. It is not yet approved or available in the U.S.

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