GE Healthcare has unveiled Portrait Mobile, a wireless patient monitoring system that enables continuous monitoring throughout a patient’s stay in hospital.

Most hospitals around the world rely on manual spot-checks to monitor patient vitals. The GE system helps clinicians detect patient deterioration. Early detection of patient deterioration may help reduce length of stay and intensive care unit (ICU) admissions, and improve patient outcomes.

Portrait Mobile includes patient-worn wireless sensors that communicate with a mobile monitor.

Globally, an estimated 65 per cent of hospital patients and over 90 per cent of post-acute care patients are monitored manually and not continually. Many vital sign changes are missed during spot checks which often occur in four-to-six-hour intervals.

A UK national audit of adult in-hospital cardiac arrests showed that more than half (57 per cent) occurred on the wards and only five per cent in the ICU where patients are monitored continuously. Most patients who end up in cardiac arrest or critical care don’t suddenly deteriorate but rather present with earlier vital signs that show abnormal trends. Respiratory rate is the highest ranked variable in models predicting clinical deterioration in the hospital.

With Portrait Mobile, respiration rate, oxygen saturation and pulse rate for general ward and post-surgery patients can be captured wirelessly and continuously. This allows caregivers to identify changes that may signal that cardiorespiratory complications or infectious disease may be developing. It gives clinicians the opportunity to act early and potentially avert serious adverse events.

“In an evaluation clinical study conducted at a London hospital in the UK, 90 per cent of nurses reported that they feel more reassured about their patient’s condition when continuous monitoring is used versus vital signs spot check measuring,” said Erno Muuranto, engineering director at GE Healthcare in Finland. “Portrait Mobile provides reliable measurement technology and meaningful alarms in a mobile setting.”

For patients, Portrait Mobile’s wireless continuous monitoring helps with the ability to move about the hospital, without being restricted to the bedside. This also allows visitors to interact with the patient without technology getting in the way. Moreover, it provides patients and family members peace of mind knowing that monitoring is constant, even when the patient is out of their room. Patient mobility may help improve patient outcomes and reduce length of stay, which may lower costs and elevate patient satisfaction.

Portrait Mobile is designed to be as reliable as wired technology. Its routable communications architecture enables hospitals to leverage their existing network infrastructure when deploying the system, reducing installation and maintenance costs.

The technology was developed in Helsinki, GE Healthcare’s global centre of excellence for monitoring where engineers have been developing patient monitoring technology for decades. Today, GE monitors are used in hospitals across the world, from Beijing to London, New York, and more.

GE Healthcare is the $17.7bn healthcare business of GE. As a medical technology, pharmaceutical diagnostics and digital innovator, GE Healthcare enables clinicians to make faster, more informed decisions through intelligent devices, data analytics, applications and services, supported by its Edison intelligence platform. With over 100 years of healthcare industry experience and around 48,000 employees globally, the company operates at the centre of an ecosystem working towards precision health, digitising healthcare, helping drive productivity and improve outcomes for patients, providers, health systems and researchers.