Asia’s first electronic ICU facility
INDIA – Fortis Healthcare and GE Healthcare have announced the launch of Asia’s first electronic intensive care unit (eICU) facility – CritiNext. The eICU services are offered by CritiNext which makes speciality critical care accessible and affordable to critically ill patients in small towns of the country.
The CritiNext e-ICU is powered by GE’s Centricity High Acuity Care Solutions and operationalized by critical care experts from Fortis Healthcare.
Commenting on the launch Aditya Vij, CEO, Fortis Healthcare Ltd said, “We are pleased to be the first healthcare institution in India and Asia to offer valuable life-saving eICU services. The brilliance is not in the technology alone, but the fact that we can use the technology to help physicians practice evidence based medicine. In a couple of years, we believe that this will be the accepted standard of care for patients in India and help to save more lives.”
The CritiNext eICU enables a remote hospital to provide advanced consultation, care and monitoring to their critically ill in-patients without having to physically transfer them to super-speciality hospitals. CritiNext transports critically ill patient from one facility to another, but patients are at the risk of clinical deterioration that may lead to adverse events including threat to life, due to the stress caused by transportation. While CritiNext eICU helps provide expert care to the patient at the local hospital helping avoid inter-hospital transfer and risks. ICU care at local hospital allows patient get better support from family as well as help reduce costs by shortening the stay in ICU. CritiNext addresses the shortage of critical care staff in remote areas and enables physicians in remote units to manage ICUs more efficiently. Remote ICU Monitoring Technology combined with expert set of eyes can help reduce medical errors and infection within ICUs leading to reduction in patient mortality by upto 60 per cent.
“We are at work for a healthier India. We innovate solutions that can help break the barrier of healthcare access, cost and quality. CritiNext eICU solution is a perfect example of how we can take scarce, quality expertise and through innovation, extend it for better health of more people. We are proud to be the technology partner for India’s first eICU initiative with Fortis Healthcare. Smart collaborations like this can help unlock new ideas that raise the standard of care for better outcomes,” said Terri Bresenham, president and CEO, GE Healthcare South Asia.
Dr Amit Varma, executive director CritiNext, Fortis Group of Hospitals said, “Each year, an estimated 10 per cent of all hospital admissions require ICU care. The statistics are staggering – just 70,000 well equipped ICU beds against an estimated demand of 400,000 ICU beds to provide critical care for approximately five million ICU cases per year. It is equally alarming to see the non-availability of qualified intensive care specialists. Only 6000 intensivists/anesthetists are catering to the critical care needs of five million patients! Well-equipped ICUs, qualified intensivists and 24/7 availability are key determinants of successful outcomes. CritiNext is a solution to bridge this huge gap of ICU beds by providing specialist care at the point, where it is needed in a cost effective way. It also provides successful evidence based outcomes helping standardize the critical care for the patients irrespective of where they live.”
CritiNext – India’s as well as Asia’s first eICU is live and operational today, covering 34 ICU beds in two small hospitals based in Raipur and Dehradun. Fortis Healthcare and GE Healthcare aim to deploy the solution connecting a minimum of 500 ICU beds in 20 hospitals by 2014.
“We have seen enormous benefit from eICU services already”, said Dr Suryavanshi, chief cardiologist, Fortis Hospitals, Raipur, the first centre in India ever to be connected with an eICU. “Over the past 45 days, we have received expert care from Fortis Escorts Hospital, Delhi, 2000 kilometers away from Raipur, virtually and in real time, benefitting over 100 critically ill patients admitted in our hospital.”
Category: Technology & Devices
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