Masimo and Northeast Ohio’s University Hospitals (UH) have jointly launched the Masimo SafetyNet patient management system to help clinicians care for patients remotely.

The telehealth solution combines the Radius PPG tetherless pulse oximetry with Doctella, a secure, home-based, remote patient surveillance platform accessible from a patient’s iOS or Android smartphone or smart device.

“The COVID-19 health emergency has significantly increased the demand for remote monitoring and patient engagement solutions in multiple settings,” a Masimo product release stated. “This new solution allows UH and other hospitals to expand patient monitoring to the home or to other facility locations set up temporarily to care for the increased demand.”

According to Masimo, current WHO guidelines recommend the monitoring of suspected or confirmed COVID-19 patients’ oxygen saturation (SpO2), respiration rate (RR), and temperature. The SafetyNet solution adapts Masimo’s existing technology to deliver a secure remote solution.

How it works:

  • Patients can be sent home with a multi-day supply of single-patient-use Radius PPG sensors and access to the Doctella mobile app, designed for easy, intuitive patient use via a digital home-care plan, or CareProgram, that aligns with expert guidance on COVID-19.
  • Radius PPG shares its SpO2, PR, and RRp data with Doctella (which can manually collect other physiological data, such as temperature) using secure Bluetooth wireless technology.
  • Twice daily, or as directed, the Doctella CareProgram actively notifies patients to answer questions such as:
    • “Are you having trouble breathing?”
    • “What is your temperature?”
  • Doctella then securely pushes these responses along with physiological monitoring data to hospital-based clinicians for evaluation.

The Doctella clinician portal allows providers to easily track patient compliance, helping them identify when intervention may be needed, as well as providing insight to help providers prioritize patients, Masimo says.

UH plans to begin piloting the system next week.

“For our patients with congestive heart failure or COPD, we can provide them with this remote monitoring capability so they do not risk a COVID-19 infection by being near potentially infected patients,” said Peter Pronovost, MD, UH Chief Clinical Transformation Officer. “For patients with a confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis, we can appropriately isolate them from other patients while ensuring they have the access to state-of-the-art care for managing their health through the recovery process.”