Philip’s Orb Offers Hospitals A New Vision for ICU Assessments

 In the world of connected health, population management has become a viable and desirable practice of healthcare. Advances in health IT and interoperability are enabling caregivers to assess the needs of patients in real time. One such product is Philips Healthcare’s latest offering, IntelliSpace eCareManager 3.9 health care platform, powered by Orb. Orb, which was launched yesterday at HIMSS, works with Phillips’ eICU program to enable triage assessments in the ICU.

“These are clinical evidence-based rules,” explains Lori Lazzara, vice president and general manager for Connected Care Solutions at Philips. “Our customers manage oversight of 7000 ICU beds, with approximately 150 patients being monitored in an average Tele-ICU simultaneously.”

With such a large patient base, it was clear to Philips that Intellispace needed additional technology. Many players are getting into a hospital space to help caregivers with algorithms that assess patient statistics. Karsten Russell-Wood, senior manager of the Telehealth division says what makes Phillips’ Orb offering unique is the graphical display.

The display is a graphical dashboard that categorizes patients using red, yellow, and green assessments. Caregivers are quickly able to visualize complex clinical data to make a care determination. Clinicians can “prioritize patient needs and streamline in-hospital care,” according to the company press release.

“It brings different elements of patient profiles together,” says Karsten Russell-Wood, senior manager of the Telehealth division at Philips. He says that the varying physiological statistics, such as patient vitals, cardiology, and hematology, which might add up to 10-15 pages of data for a physician to scroll through, can be very clearly assessed in a quick decisive manner. More than 100 clinical rules go into the graphic representation. “One of my customers at HIMSS says its like a patient is wearing a traffic light.”

As hospitals look to improve outcomes, in accordance with the Affordable care Act, products such as Philip’s Orb will be critical. The Orb’s pilot studies at Banner and Mercy hospital showed a 20% reduction in mortality and a 30% reduction in the length of stay, explains Lazzarra. “Hospitals can’t afford not to adopt this type of technology.”

--Heather Thompson is editor-in-chief of MD+DI