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The high-reliability ICU

Unifying situational awareness, communication and timely actions to improve patient outcomes. 

January 17, 2021

What the pandemic has exposed in ICUs

The utmost priority in medical intensive care units (ICUs) is getting the right treatment to the right patient at the right time. The pandemic has abundantly brought to light the challenges ICUs worldwide struggle with: In addition to the issues in clinical workforce management, workflows are inefficiently organized and systems are not flexible enough for rapidly evolving situations. All this has an impact on the quality of care.

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What's in the paper?

  • Introduction - Issues in ICUs today
  • Problem definition - Complexity of care, staff shortage,
    workflow inefficiencies
  • Solution - Integrated data management and
    digital communication systems
  • Benefits - Less medical errors, better care quality,
    shorter ICU-LOS
  • High reliability ICU - What it is and how to achieve
  • Future improvements - Evolution of digitalization in healthcare systems
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Common challenges in an ICU

  • More than 70% of all alarms in the ICU have no real clinical significance, and therefore lead to no medical action.
  • ICU healthcare professionals dedicate almost 20% of their time on administrative duties - a time which in crisis situations is not affordable to lose.
  • More than 90% of medical errors are due to communication difficulties and inefficient team collaboration.

The future: real-time support systems

Integrated patient data management systems including communication support can increase the quality and accuracy of medical records, increase situational awareness, reduce the frequency of medical errors, or help assess a patient's condition.

Health care professionals (HCPs) use real-time support systems not only to monitor patients' vital parameters remotely, but also to relate them to other factors - such as medication. Clinical decision support systems (CDSS) and integrated medical device alarming will further improve workflow efficiency in critical situations.

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