Boston hospital tests tracking system in emergency department setting

The goal is to improve monitoring of patients both in the emergency waiting area and after admission.

By Tyler Chin, AMNews staff. May 1, 2006.

Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston is testing ultrasound tracking and wireless technologies to monitor the vital signs and location of patients while they are in the emergency waiting area.

Under a six-month pilot test that will end in October, the hospital is outfitting patients complaining of chest pain and shortness of breath with waist packs containing a personal digital assistant with four protruding wires.

Three of those wires are connected to the patient's chest to form an EKG tracing that will be fed into the PDA, said Thomas Stair, MD, an emergency physician and research director for the emergency department at Brigham and Women's. The remaining wire is connected to a pulse oximeter clipped to the patient's finger that has a tag that transmits ultrasound waves to sensors the hospital has installed in the waiting room and nearby areas, including bathrooms.

The waist pack monitors patient's heart rates and oxygen saturation, wirelessly transmitting those data to a central station monitored by emergency personnel.

Should a patient's condition deteriorate as he or she awaits treatment, emergency personnel will be alerted and will be able to pinpoint the patient's exact location in real time via the ultrasound tags, which transmit ultrasound waves as the patient moves throughout the emergency waiting area, Dr. Stair said.