Ocuvera Remote Patient Monitoring

Ocuvera uses artificial intelligence, video monitoring, and two-way audio to provide insight into patient rooms. Designed as a fall risk reduction technology, Ocuvera pairs video monitoring with automated artificial intelligence algorithms to alert nurses to risky patient behaviors. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic inspired the Ocuvera team to expand their system to help. Healthcare workers are on the frontlines, caring for many patients at once while trying to minimize their own risk of exposure. Using the Ocuvera system to remotely monitor their patients is a flexible, cost-effective way to reduce instances of face-to-face contact with infected patients and still keep them safe. If scaled globally, use of Ocuvera has the potential to minimize the impact of the pandemic throughout healthcare facilities, and provide the long-term benefit of affordable, customizable video monitoring and fall risk reduction.

Though the COVID-19 pandemic is a problem worldwide, Ocuvera is specifically targeting addressing the needs of Critical Access Hospitals (CAHs). CAHs are rural hospitals that have 25 or fewer acute care inpatient beds, are located more than 35 miles from another hospital, and provide 24/7 emergency services, among other features. There are 64 CAHs in Ocuvera’s home state of Nebraska alone. Even under ideal circumstances, CAHs face unique challenges and heavier burdens compared to their urban counterparts, and the added pressures of COVID-19 are enormous. The small number of beds at CAHs may not be adequate to accommodate COVID-19 patients. Older patients, who make up the majority of CAH patient populations, are also the most likely to be hospitalized from COVID-19 and suffer the most severe symptoms of the disease. Lower staff numbers and higher staff-to-patient ratios mean nurses’ risk of exposure is increased due to their caring for many COVID-19 patients simultaneously. Financial pressures may force CAHs to close, leaving entire rural communities without access to emergency healthcare when they need it most. 

Ocuvera systems consist of depth sensors, docks, and monitoring stations. The sensor uses Microsoft’s Azure Kinect 3D camera to gather depth information about a patient room. When used for fall risk reduction, the Ocuvera system uses this depth information to inform customized artificial intelligence algorithms that can predict patient behaviors that are likely to result in them exiting the bed or falling. When the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic became clear, we worked to think of ways that our system could be helpful in hospitals most affected by the disease. Our team quickly developed two-way audio and voice activation capabilities so the system could be used to minimize direct contact with COVID-19 patients.

With funds from this award, we will develop a one-box version of the Ocuvera system that will cater to the specific needs of CAHs. The box shipped to CAHs will contain all components of the system as well as anything necessary for installation, including clear instructions and pre-configured settings for each hospital.

Use of Ocuvera at CAHs will support healthcare workers and the vulnerable rural and elderly populations they serve. Ocuvera has partnered with several CAHs in Nebraska in the past during feasibility studies of the system, so we have spent years gaining understanding of their unique needs. Once the system is deployed, the hospital should quickly be able to see results, specifically a reduction in face-to-face interactions between nurses and COVID-19 patients, reduced workload, improved workflow, and reduced personal protective equipment (PPE) usage. Based on how our current customers are using Ocuvera in their COVID-19 rooms, we believe Ocuvera helps in four key scenarios:

-Eliminate the need to enter the patient room in response to a call light

 -Nurses can request supplies be brought to the door, eliminating the need to exit the room, remove PPE, obtain the supply, and don new PPE before re-entering the room

-Enable witnesses to verify procedures from outside the patient room

-Initiate verbal patient checks via monitor audio

The hospital should experience other positive impacts in the longer term, including cost savings on video monitoring and, should the hospital choose to use the Ocuvera system’s fall risk reduction capabilities, reduced fall risk for its patients.

The Health Security & Pandemics challenge looks for solutions that can prevent and slow the spread of an emerging outbreak – the Ocuvera system can do this through limiting face-to-face interactions between frontline healthcare personnel and COVID-19 patients, reducing the risk that healthcare workers will become infected. This not only responds to the immediate needs of controlling the pandemic, but could also be useful in mitigating future outbreaks by reducing the need for healthcare personnel to directly interact with infected patients. The Ocuvera system is an easy to implement, cost-effective, nurse-centric approach to patient monitoring.

Ocuvera’s core technology is driven by AI algorithms. We have seen the potential for AI to make a difference in people’s lives, which is clear in the results from our pilot deployments that the Ocuvera system is having an impact on unattended bed exits and falls. We understand that AI is best when it is designed with people in mind, to empower them to do their job better, not replace them. AI automates the most tedious aspects of the nurse’s job, freeing them to spend their limited time on the most important decisions. To create AI with this ability, we have spent years gathering the best possible data from real patients in real hospital rooms in order to best understand the problem of falls.

 If we received this prize, we would use the resources provided to apply our experience with ethical AI to COVID-19 monitoring, expanding our system’s capability from a monitoring solution to something more.