Interview with Jim Welch, EVP, Sotera Wireless

This interview is with a long established thought leader in patient monitoring and alarm notification, Jim Welch. Jim has demonstrated a knack for bringing a fresh approach to long-term persistent problems in monitoring, nursing vigilance and patient care. At Sotera Wireless, Jim’s had a chance to re-imagine patient monitoring in low acuity settings with predictably innovative results. At the AAMI 2014 conference, I had the opportunity to attend the breakfast symposium where Jim presented, Transforming Care in Non-ICU Settings through Disruptive Continuous Monitoring Technology. The following discussion centers on patient monitoring data analytics, pioneered by Sotera Wireless. What is the value of data analytics applied to medical device alarms? For many years caregivers have had to struggle under the weight of a large number of false and non-actionable alarms. The resulting cognitive overload often results in alarm fatigue. Sotera has determined that a very effective way to reduce non-actionable alarms is to optimize alarm default settings. Before you can improve something, you must be able to measure it. Medical device manufacturers have always generated log files of patient data, alarms and other system data processed or generated by their patient monitoring systems. But this data was only used in product development, troubleshooting, and incident investigations. What is needed is to give clinicians access to this data – and tools to analyze the data – to reduce non...
Source: Medical Connectivity Consulting - Category: Technology Consultants Authors: Tags: Clinical Alarms Company Profiles Patient Safety alarm notification Source Type: blogs