E-ICUs: Future of critical care delivery?

Lack of expertise in handling ICU patients  and shortage of specialized doctors in smaller towns has led to the introduction of the concept of eICU’s in the country. eICU is a technology whereby a metropolis specialist can put an ICU patient on a 24 hour electronic intensive care surveillance.

The eICU technology initiative helps in a constant flow of information of vital facts such as pulse rate, temperature, heartbeat, breath flow apart from a connected monitor, ventilator and audio visual technology that helps raise alarms, conduct surgeries, medical treatments or emergency procedures.

New avenues of clinical practice are opening up for top private hospitals through this technology of taking on small town patients in critical conditions. A doctor sitting in a metropolitan can monitor a patient in a remote district or semi urban town across the count through this medical initiative.

Hospitals like Apollo and Fortis are already onto it . Apollo Healthcare has put 100 beds on eICU surveillance across the country and plans to raise this number to a 1000 in the near future. These beds would be monitored from three or four command bases at Apollo Hospitals, all across India in the coming three years. Fortis has gone a step ahead by kicking of  remote monitoring of patients in the EICU category in Bangladesh. This being its first ‘across the border ‘ facility as reported by HT.