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"We realized, soon after deploying these at Yale, that the VPS workstation delivered additional benefits, such as protecting caregivers from unnecessary exposure to infection and reducing the use of personal protective equipment (PPE). Yale New Haven is among the first hospitals to deploy the solution, maintaining a high standard of care for today's coronavirus patients, while establishing a higher standard through extended device connectivity."
The Capsule VPS workstation is launched at YNHHS and analyzes live data from ventilators, which enhances clinically actionable events to respiratory therapists, pulmonologists, and intensivists.
The additional surveillance complements YNHHS’ InSight Tele-ICU program, which employed Capsule’s Remote Surveillance solution previously.
Patient doors remain closed to protect healthcare workers from getting infected with COVID-19. With a limited number of Respiratory Therapists (RTs) to cover all ventilators, the VPS workstation helps workers uncover the right time to provide care in patient areas.
The VPS workstation also allows RTs outside of the room to help less experienced care members at the bedside, the announcement noted.
"Our collaboration with Capsule Technologies is an extension of our existing partnership and our own long-held vision for using technology to manage critically ill patients through remote access, analytics and smart notifications," said Chris Gutmann, system director, Information Technology and Clinical Engineering at YNHHS.
"This ventilated patient surveillance solution is not only helping our care teams confront the COVID-19 pandemic today, but I expect it will continue to serve the needs of our clinicians and patients well into the future, becoming a standard of care."
The health system has transformed non-ICU patient rooms into temporary rooms, which are isolated and do not have windows into access ways. This creates a negative environment and does not allow ventilators and bedside medical devices to be visible or alarms to be heard.
The workstation allows staff to remotely see and hear the ventilators and formulate an effective response to the virus. Overall, YNHHS stated that they are achieving superior patient outcomes for COVID-19 ventilated patients compared to most other reported data from hospitals in the US.
As the coronavirus pandemic continues to spread across the US, frontline workers are looking for ways to limit their exposure to the virus while also caring for patients.
At the beginning of May, Cleveland Clinic and Epic recently launched a remote monitoring tool to allow clinicians to quickly respond to patients, and a new mobile app to help providers understand how to use different types of ventilators available to them.
The remote monitoring tool will manage care in a quick and efficient manner while keeping both patients and frontline workers safe. The tool is connected to patient medical records and is available through Epic’s MyChart patient portal.
Individuals who have contracted COVID-19 will be enrolled in a 14-day interactive care plan through the patient portal. There, they can enter symptoms, temperature, and oxygen once a day. If any symptoms worsen during the time period, care providers will be notified and will reach out to the patient with additional information.
The mobile respiratory app provides real-time, accurate information about the ventilator model healthcare workers are using, which may have previously been new and unfamiliar to them.
“Think of ventilators like cars — there are many makes and models, but the main functions are the same,” said Jay Alberts, PhD, one of the app’s co-creators. “By entering information in this app, the caregiver can quickly understand how to operate that specific ventilator.”
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