Ambient Intelligence Transforming Patient Care

Written by Debbie Sukin

Since starting my career in health care, new technology has shaped the way that we deliver care to our patients.?One such innovation is ambient intelligence, computer vision that creates predictive models and provides us with a variety of tools to improve how we practice health care.?

With this technology, we can focus on:

• Maximizing high-touch time at the bedside with patients
• Reducing interruptions for patients during their hospital stay
• Improving staff satisfaction and performance

One of our pilot initiatives is currently testing how we use this technology in our inpatient rooms to improve upon patient fall prevention, clinical documentation, hand hygiene, and more.?The devices we use completely anonymize people and instead focus on movements and actions for precise documentation.?By ambiently collecting specific surrounding data points in the hospital room, we have been able to show a reduction in time and resources spent on manual processes.?

Another area for improvement is in our operating rooms where we use A.I. and machine learning technology to accurately track OR procedures, ranging from incision start time, turnover time spent, and surgical instruments used. In collaboration with our partner vendor, we have co-developed this technology, which has shown to have 99% accuracy.?In the past, it had been difficult to maximize efficiency without having real-time information.?With this new technology, our schedules update autonomously every minute, and we are 24% better at predicting OR case durations than our existing electronic health record (EHR).?

Future use cases for ambient intelligence technology include patient pain assessment, incontinence and elopement detection, and pressure injury prevention.?We continue to see impactful outcomes such as improved HCAHPS, reduced LOS, increased satisfaction amongst clinicians and patients, less documentation burden and better reporting leading to overall improved work efficiencies.?The future of health care is now with these ambient intelligence solutions.