Becker's Hospital Review

20 EXECUTIVE BRIEFING 2 EXECUTIVE BRIEFING SPONSORED BY Clinicians need actionable information, not just data — Here's how to give it to them I n today's healthcare environment, the volume of patient data generated by medical devices is so vast that it's not realistically possible for clinicians to analyze and act on all of it, especially in real time. In addition, the continuum of care is expanding beyond the walls of the traditional health system, with trends such as hospital-at-home gaining momentum. Capturing comprehensive data about a patient throughout the entire treatment journey can be difficult, as can turning those data into actionable insights that can be used to improve patient care. Becker's Hospital Review recently spoke with Harsh Dharwad, President and CEO of Nihon Kohden Digital Health Solutions, about these challenges. He shared how technology can improve patient care and the clinician experience by making data from patient monitoring devices more actionable. The future of healthcare is digital Nihon Kohden Corporation is a leading Japanese medical device manufacturer that is known for its best-in-class monitoring products. The company recognized long ago, however, that digital health represents the wave of the future and began investing in innovative products to advance the healthcare field. "Nihon Kohden Digital Health Solutions (NKDHS) wants to make clinicians' lives easier and improve patient care," Mr. Dharwad said. "Not only do we want to provide world-class medical devices, but we have also developed a digital health ecosystem to enhance the patient care workflow in hospitals." Around the clock, medical devices generate large volumes of data, as well as many alarms and alerts. It's impossible for clinicians to gather all the information about a patient that is generated by different monitoring devices, consume and interpret these data, and make improved care decisions. "On top of that, most hospitals and health systems are struggling with shortages of nurses, technicians, and doctors," Mr. Dharwad said. "The healthcare sector is ripe for the technological and digital advancements that have occurred in other industries." AI-based technologies and tools serve as a second set of eyes for clinicians. Solutions powered by artificial intelligence can continuously review all data generated by various monitoring devices in real time to identify patient-specific trends that precede physiological deterioration. This information can be used to inform clinicians proactively and to enable intervention prior to a clinical event. Clinicians need actionable information, not just data Rather than simply providing alarms and alerts that are often ignored, NKDHS has conducted considerable research to identify the actionable information clinicians actually need. "This approach helps solve the challenges of alarm fatigue, the overwhelming volume of patient data, and healthcare talent shortages," Mr. Dharwad said. NKDHS's CoMET® (Continuous Monitoring of Event Trajectories) solution provides an innovative visual display to clinicians that represents the three-hour trajectory of a patient's risk for future adverse events. "The comet-shaped alerts are a simple and intuitive way of showing whether a patient is progressing toward higher or lower risk," Mr. Dharwad said. "We analyze a great deal of data to provide risk indications for eight to ten different future clinical events, such as sepsis, emergency intubation and hemorrhage." Many other industry solutions use static lab data and discrete vital sign data to evaluate patient risk. Depending on the hospital and its clinical workflow, however, labs and vital sign data about a patient may be gathered just once or twice a day. As a result, the accuracy and effectiveness of such risk indicators are significantly limited by the low frequency of data collection. "NKDHS believes that subtle changes can occur in a patient's physiological parameters prior to a catastrophic clinical event," Mr. Dharwad said. "What differentiates CoMET from almost every other risk indicator in the industry is that it continuously monitors patient waveform data, which creates more accurate and timely risk indications." One compelling use case for CoMET is sepsis — a life- threatening complication of infection that affects approximately 1.7 million adults in the United States each year and has high patient mortality rates. To address this problem, NKDHS recently worked with healthcare organizations to introduce CoMET for early identification of patients at risk for developing sepsis. The application frequently indicated a higher risk for sepsis up to six hours before diagnosis. This expeditious identification of risk supports early clinical action, which is associated with a reduction in mortality. "Every 15 minutes, the risk information in CoMET is updated, so clinicians can see the progression of that risk," Mr. Dharwad explained. "As the CoMET visual alert becomes larger and

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