Electronic Intensive Care Unit (eICU)
What is an electronic intensive care unit?
An electronic intensive care unit (eICU) is a subset of telemedicine in which technology is used to provide critical care services to a patient even when the critical care physician is not available at the same hospital.
With eICU, the patient’s condition and vital signs are monitored using visual equipment, high-definition audio, and software tools. The physician can also remotely access the patient’s data, treatment information, and clinical profiles.
With access to this information, the intensive care medicine specialist can provide real-time support and manage the ICU patients even without being at the same facility. This increases the number of patients across facilities who have access to quality care.
How do eICUs improve healthcare?
With eICUs, intensive care specialists can monitor patients 24/7, which allows them to identify small changes in the patient’s status and quickly alert the location’s ICU physicians and nurses. By allowing for early interventions, complications are reduced, and patients can recover faster.
In addition to monitoring patients, eICUs can also:
- Perform patient evaluations
- Guide the on-site team through a procedure
- Run codes
- Order medications
- Order and interpret tests, such as bloodwork or imaging tests