Hospitals with smart ICU deliver efficient patient care with cost savings while easing employee burnout

Sanjeev Dahiwadkar, Founder & CEO, Cognota Healthcare highlights that smart ICU performs many human functions, leading to freeing up skilled healthcare staffers for other operations. Such utilisation of human resources eases cost pressure on hospitals. Estimates show that around 30 per cent of cost savings happen in a smart ICU setup as compared to a traditional one

The Intensive Care Unit (ICU) is the most critical element of a healthcare system. Caregivers like doctors, nurses, and other support staff take vital decisions on a real-time basis to save precious lives. All hospitals, therefore, deploy an adequate number of resourceful staffers to monitor the health conditions of patients and take timely intervention measures. This process is both cost and manpower intensive. With the advent of technological solutions in medical care, traditional ICUs are slowly giving way to smart ICUs. In a smart ICU setup, multiple technological solutions including cloud computing, data analytics, IoT (Internet of Things)-powered devices, and AI (Artificial Intelligence)- powered algorithms are leveraged to track, monitor, and collate the vital metrics of a patient in a single digital dashboard. With real-time data collection and collation, it helps in taking timely care decisions without delay. As time is the currency in an ICU setup, smart ICU enables efficient decision-making without any delay with technology as a key enabler.

Helping hand to stressed employees of ICU:

Many efforts (around 50 per cent of efforts) of ICU staff are about making sure everything is ready and working as expected. These monitoring tasks can be automated as well as notifying in case of situations that warrants attention of staff. This automation creates much breathing room for ICU employees while making sure that patients are monitored without any compromise in service or attention required.

Huge cost savings for hospitals:

Technology has always been used to reduce the cost of operation and a smart ICU is no exception. Traditional ICUs use a lot of manpower apart from the requirement of frequent coordination among the hospital staff. So, hospitals incur a lot of costs in maintaining adequate manpower in ICUs. Smart ICU, however, performs many human functions, leading to freeing up skilled healthcare staffers for other operations. Such utilisation of human resources eases cost pressure on hospitals. Estimates show that around 30 per cent of cost savings happen in a smart ICU setup as compared to a traditional one. This also augurs well for patients as the cost of treatment comes down.

Qualitative healthcare delivery in rural area:

Apart from cost savings, healthcare delivery can significantly improve in rural regions through the adoption of smart ICU. India has a huge shortage of hospital beds and ICUs. This glaring gap got exposed during the COVID pandemic. The availability of healthcare staffers, especially for critical care is more acute in rural India. The latest statistics show that India has around 1.4 lakh ICU beds. This is way short of the ideal ratio. The lack of intensivists- the specialist doctors who are in charge of the care- is more glaring. In this scenario, smart ICU can provide a new dimension to patient care in rural areas. Because smart ICU system enables live remote monitoring through cloud computing that shares live data to a centralised hub. This data can be monitored in a dashboard through a computer or even using a handheld mobile device from any part of the world. So smart ICU can be a great tool for real-time monitoring from remote locations. In this perspective, smart ICUs set up in rural areas can enable patients to be treated by specialists residing in city centres. This will also help in getting a second opinion from specialist doctors from larger hospitals.

Effective delivery:

Smart ICU setup is more effective in many ways than traditional ICUs. Usually, the technology solutions are seamlessly integrated with the existing IT infrastructure of the hospital. As all the data collected from patients are stored in the cloud, adequate security protocol is followed to protect the safety and privacy of that personal information. Moreover, the element of human error or oversight is significantly reduced through technological applications.

However, the successful adoption of smart ICU will be dependent on a user-friendly design and implementation of the whole system. User-friendliness will make it more attractive for usage among both nursing and medical staffers. This is important because it brings in a cultural change in the traditional care delivery mechanism. With time, medical care is becoming more patient-centric. And smart ICU makes personalised patient care popular. In this perspective, a healthcare provider should partner with the right technology partner to design a smart ICU system that caters to the specific requirements of the hospital. Globally, the healthcare ecosystem is going through rapid phases of digital transformation and the pace is more in emerging economies including India. Given the rising adoption level, those healthcare providers will reap the first mover advantage that implement the system early.