Nightingale: a Pre-commercial Procurement project to design Europe’s next generation acute care patient monitoring systems
Nightingale is a Pre-commercial Procurement project funded by the European Commission. The aim is to stimulate industry to develop the next generation of acute care monitoring systems.
Despite tremendous improvements in diagnostic and therapeutic options for patients, there is an important ‘Achilles heel’ in the way we monitor those at risk of deterioration. To detect clinical deterioration outside the critical care unit most healthcare practitioners use intermittent observations every 4-8 hours. This practice has not changed for decades but patients admitted to the wards today are increasingly complex and frail and can deteriorate rapidly. Healthcare costs are becoming ever more constrained, so increasing the numbers of nursing staff to meet the need for increased monitoring is not feasible. This situation is further magnified for patients at home who may just have informal carers and essentially no monitoring; so that clinical deterioration can be missed and patients suffer significant harm or even death.
Nightingale is looking to the technology sector to help develop systems that:
- accurately identify patients at risk of deterioration
- ensure timely recognition and communication of deterioration
- analyse collected ‘big data’ to increase understanding of treatment of specific patient groups
- create a record that can ensure learning
- promote active patient involvement in care
The solution should ideally be able to monitor vital signs, be wire free and unobtrusive, capable of alerting appropriate personnel, allow for interaction between carer and patient be it in the hospital or at home. Further details on the challenge and desired solutions can be found on the Nightingale website (http://www.nightingale-h2020.eu). The aim is to start the open market consultations from February 2017 and start the tendering process from November 2017. It is unlikely that any one particular company will be able to deliver the solution independently and a high degree of collaboration is envisaged. If you would like to register your interest or find out more please visit the website.
Source: Nightingale
