WAUKESHA, Wisc.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--GE Healthcare announced today U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clearance for its CARESCAPE(TM) Patient Data Module for mobile patient monitoring. Reflecting the industry’s most advanced monitoring capabilities, the CARESCAPE Patient Data Module features 24-hour capture of critical patient data and a unique close-to-the-patient, self-powered design that alleviates common portability constraints. The product is a central component of the new GE CARESCAPE portfolio, an integrated suite of patient monitoring devices, communications networks and IT systems designed to transform traditional patient monitoring data into clinical intelligence, enabling clinicians to make critical healthcare decisions faster and more efficiently.
CARESCAPE Patient Data Module ensures that the receiving nurse has a complete monitoring history when a patient arrives. Advancing GE’s history of parameter excellence and the customer-proven success of the predecessor product, TRAM®, CARESCAPE Patient Data Module reflects more than 10,000 hours of testing and feedback from more than 700 clinicians. Its innovative, lightweight, miniature design allows it to stay with the patient to capture and store all patient measurements--both standard and specialty--providing clinicians with the unique ability to maintain critical baseline measurements typically lost during transport. Its close-to-the-patient design reduces the length of cables that typically tether the patient to wall-mounted equipment, and its simple grab-and-go transport capability reduces the potential for connection delays.
CARESCAPE Patient Data Module is the latest addition to GE Healthcare’s CARESCAPE portfolio of innovative patient monitoring products. CARESCAPE products feature parameter excellence, superior device integration and control and clinical decision support capabilities combined with a wireless infrastructure that supports the secure, uninterrupted transmission of patient information. Unifying previously un-integrated streams of patient data, the CARESCAPE portfolio offers a new approach to patient monitoring by assimilating critical patient data and offering easy access to clinical intelligence from wireless and stationary devices. This enables clinicians to make critical healthcare decisions faster, which may lead to improvements in patient care.
“Humans can only assimilate so much un-integrated information. The power of systems--whether it’s a physiologic monitor or IT system or ideally a system that combines those functions--is to integrate the information and then use it optimally,” said M. Michael Shabot, M.D., Director of Surgery Critical Care, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California (2006). “That’s where the real power comes from. It is the way quality and safety will be measured, and the way data will be managed in ICUs in the future.”
The CARESCAPE portfolio addresses several trends facing hospital systems in the U.S. as cited by recent government and academic reports:
The number of patients with critical conditions in hospitals grew by 21 percent in a five-year period.(1) By 2020 there is expected to be a shortage of 1 million registered nurses in the U.S.(2) U.S. demand for patient monitoring systems will grow 5.4 percent annually through 2010, bolstered by technological advances.(3) There are nearly 80 million baby boomers in the U.S., and as this population ages, the average acuity of hospitalized patients is projected to grow rapidly.(4) “The traditional approach to patient monitoring has outlived its usefulness,” said David Ataide, Vice President & General Manager for GE Healthcare’s Monitoring Solutions business. “Clinicians facing today’s healthcare challenges need a new approach. After extensive interviews with some of the world’s most forward-thinking hospitals, we developed CARESCAPE. These five products reflect our commitment to helping care providers do their jobs better and ultimately improve patient care.”
In addition to CARESCAPE Patient Data Module, the CARESCAPE portfolio includes:
CARESCAPE CIC Pro: assimilates real-time and historical patient data from multiple monitoring sources for caregivers. This product integrates data to view a single patient, or up to 16 patients per display. Clinicians can view near real-time parameters, manage patient information and view a one-hour trending of parameters to make informed treatment decisions. CARESCAPE CIC Pro also enables access to any patient on the hospital network and to hospital-wide applications such as radiology or lab results to help improve productivity.
CARESCAPE iPanel: aggregates data from multiple systems and devices into a Web-based portal that provides efficient access to care-critical information. Using a tablet PC or other workstation, clinicians can view lab results, cardiology information, diagnostic images, history and physical documentation and other details. CARESCAPE iPanel automatically identifies the correct patient’s data from across the enterprise, without requiring separate logins to various applications, helping clinicians save time and improve accuracy.
CARESCAPE Enterprise Access: a single, integrated wireless platform that enables critical patient data to be securely coordinated, managed and distributed without the type of communications failures, interference or interruptions that can be caused by un-integrated systems. CARESCAPE Enterprise Access transparently incorporates new systems and services without the need to install parallel, standalone IT infrastructures.
CARESCAPE Mobile Viewers: offer clinicians remote access to up-to-the-moment waveforms, numerics, visual alarms and trends for one or multiple patients. Clinicians can closely monitor a patient’s condition from almost anywhere within or outside the hospital using Web-enabled PCs, wireless laptops, tablet PCs and or cell phones.
The addition of CARESCAPE Patient Data Module to the CARESCAPE portfolio affirms GE Healthcare’s commitment to providing clinicians with innovative tools to meet the challenges facing today’s healthcare system. By providing easy access to quality patient information from any device--wireless, desktop or bedside--GE Healthcare is providing clinicians with valuable productivity gains and the unique opportunity to act earlier in the care process to preserve and help improve patient care.
Additional information about the CARESCAPE portfolio and GE Healthcare’s approach to patient monitoring can be viewed at www.gehealthcare.com.
ABOUT GE HEALTHCARE
GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies and services that are shaping a new age of patient care. Our expertise in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, performance improvement, drug discovery, and biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies is helping clinicians around the world re-imagine new ways to predict, diagnose, inform, treat and monitor disease, so patients can live their lives to the fullest.
GE Healthcare’s broad range of products and services enable healthcare providers to better diagnose and treat cancer, heart disease, neurological diseases and other conditions earlier. Our vision for the future is to enable a new “early health” model of care focused on earlier diagnosis, pre-symptomatic disease detection and disease prevention. Headquartered in the United Kingdom, GE Healthcare is a $17 billion unit of General Electric Company (NYSE: GE - News). Worldwide, GE Healthcare employs more than 46,000 people committed to serving healthcare professionals and their patients in more than 100 countries. For more information about GE Healthcare, visit our website at www.gehealthcare.com.
(1) Unruh L. Licensed nurse staffing and adverse outcomes in hospitals. Med Care (AHRQ and NSF study). 2003.
(2) Physician Workforce Policy Guidelines for the United States, 2000-2020. College of Graduate Medical Education.
(3) Patient Monitoring Systems to 2010. The Freedonia Group. 1 May 2006. http://freedonia.ecnext.com/free-scripts/comsite2.pl?p age=description&src_id=0285&purchase_type=ITM&study_id=2052 (Due to the length of this URL, it may be necessary to copy and paste it into your Internet browser’s URL address field).
(4) The Critical Care Workforce: A Study of the Supply and Demand for Critical Care Physicians. Requested by: Senate Report 108-81
Contact: GE Healthcare Carrie Michael, 262-501-2909 carrie.michael@ge.com
Source: GE Healthcare
