Patients admitted to Houston Methodist Hospital receive a half-dollar-sized monitoring device strapped to their chest — and unknowingly play a task within the increasing use of artificial intelligence in healthcare.
The slim, battery-powered device, called BioButton, records vital signs resembling heart and respiratory rates after which wirelessly sends the readings to caregivers sitting in a 24-hour control room elsewhere within the hospital or at home. The device’s software uses AI to investigate the extensive data and detect signs that a patient’s condition is deteriorating.
Hospital officials say the BioButton has improved care and reduced bedside nurses’ workload since its introduction last yr.
“Because we catch things earlier, patients do better because we don’t have to wait for the bedside team to notice when something is going wrong,” said Sarah Pletcher, system vp at Houston Methodist.
But some nurses fear the technology could find yourself replacing moderately than supporting them — and harming patients. Houston Methodist, one in all dozens of U.S. hospitals using the device, is the primary to make use of the BioButton to observe all patients except those within the intensive care unit, Pletcher said.
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“The hype around a lot of these devices is that they provide care at scale at lower labor costs,” said Michelle Mahon, a registered nurse and deputy director of National Nurses United, the career’s largest U.S. union. “This is a trend that we find disturbing,” she said.
The launch of BioButton is one in all the most recent examples of hospitals using technology to enhance efficiency and address a decades-long care shortage. However, this transition has raised concerns of its own, including over the device’s use of AI. Surveys show The public is suspicious of healthcare providers who depend on them to supply patient care.
The FDA cleared the BioButton to be used in adult patients not within the intensive care unit in December 2022. It is one in all many AI tools that hospitals use today for tasks resembling reading diagnostic imaging results.
In 2023, President Joe Biden directed the Department of Health and Human Services to develop a plan to control AI in hospitals, including by collecting reports of patients harmed by its use.
The head of BioIntelliSense, which developed the BioButton, said his device is a big step forward in comparison with nurses who enter a room every few hours to take vital signs. “With AI, you now go from ‘I wonder why this patient crashed’ to ‘I can see this crash coming before it happens and can intervene appropriately,'” said James Mault, CEO of the Golden, Colo.-based corporate.
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The BioButton stays on the skin with an adhesive, is waterproof and has a battery lifetime of as much as 30 days. According to the corporate, the device was used on greater than 80,000 hospital patients nationwide last yr, allowing doctors to quickly detect deterioration in health by recording greater than 1,000 measurements per day per patient.
Hospitals pay BioIntelliSense an annual subscription fee for the devices and software.
Houston Methodist officials wouldn’t reveal how much the hospital is paying for the technology, although Pletcher said it equates to lower than a cup of coffee per day per patient.
For a hospital system that treats 1000’s of patients at a time — Houston Methodist has 2,653 non-ICU beds at its eight Houston-area hospitals — such an investment could still mean thousands and thousands of dollars a yr.
Hospital officials say they’ve not made any changes to nurse staffing because of this of the BioButton rollout and don’t plan to achieve this.
At the hospital’s virtual monitoring control center on a recent morning, about 15 scrub-clad nurses and technicians sat in front of huge monitors showing the health status of the a whole bunch of patients they were purported to be monitoring.
A red check mark next to a patient’s name meant that the AI software had found readings that were outside the traditional range. Employees can click on a patient’s medical record and consider their vital signs over time in addition to other medical history. These virtual nurses could, when you will, contact the on-site nurses by phone or email, and even video call directly into the patient’s room.
Nutanben Gandhi, a technician who was watching 446 patients on her monitor that morning, said that when she receives an alert, she looks on the patient’s health record to see if the abnormality might be easily explained by something within the patient’s condition can or if that is mandatory Contact the nursing staff on the patient’s floor.
Often a warning might be easily dismissed. But it may well be difficult to identify signs of deteriorating health, said Steve Klahn, clinical director of virtual medicine at Houston Methodist.
“We’re looking for a needle in a haystack,” he said.
Donald Eustes, 65, was admitted to Houston Methodist in March for treatment of prostate cancer and has since been treated for a stroke. He likes to wear the BioButton.
“You never know what can happen here, and it’s a good thing to have extra eyes watching you,” he said from his hospital bed. After being told the device uses AI, the Montgomery, Texas, man said he had no problem with it helping his clinical team. “That sounds like a good use of artificial intelligence.”
Patients and caregivers alike profit from distant monitoring just like the BioButton, said Houston Methodist’s Pletcher.
The hospital has installed small cameras and microphones in all patient rooms, allowing nurses outside to speak with patients and perform tasks resembling assisting with patient admissions and discharge instructions. Patients can include relations in long-distance consultations with nurses or a health care provider, she said.
Virtual technology allows nurses on duty to supply more hands-on assistance, resembling establishing intravenous access, Pletcher said. With the BioButton, nurses can wait to take routine vital signs every eight hours as an alternative of each 4, she said.
Pletcher said the device frees up nursing staff from monitoring patients and allows some to have more flexible work schedules because virtual care might be provided from home as an alternative of coming to the hospital. Ultimately, it helps to retain nursing staff and never drive them away, she said.
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Sheeba Roy, nursing manager at Houston Methodist, said some nursing staff members are nervous about counting on the device and never checking patients’ vital signs themselves as often. However, tests have shown that the device provides accurate information.
“After we implemented it, employees loved it,” Roy said.
Serena Bumpus, executive director of the Texas Nurses Association, said her concern with any technology is that it may well place greater burdens on nurses and take away their time with patients.
“We need to be extremely vigilant and make sure we don’t rely on this to replace the ability of nurses to think critically and assess patients and confirm that what this device is telling us is true,” Bumpus said .
Houston Methodist plans to send the BioButton home with patients this yr so the hospital can higher track their progress within the weeks after discharge, measure the standard of their sleep and monitor their gait.
“We will not need fewer nurses in the health care system, but we have limited resources and need to use them as wisely as possible,” Pletcher said. “Given the forecast demand and impending supply, we will not have enough to meet demand. So anything we can do to give nurses time back is a good thing.”
