Baptist Memorial will deploy LockDeep's advanced telehealth technology throughout its system of 22 affiliate hospitals.

WHY IT MATTERS

The collaboration utilizes LookDeep's Clinical Action Platform, built on modern SOC2 Type II audited software, to provide Baptist Memorial's nurses, therapists, doctors and others with a way to continuously monitor patients at every moment of their hospital journey, according to the announcement.

When paired with telemedicine teams, the virtual inpatient command center provides support to hospital bedside teams.

Dr. Paul DePriest, executive vice president and chief operating officer for Baptist Memorial Health Care, said one of the system's hospitals tested and evaluated the solution.

The experience allowed the Tennessee-based system, which also operates in Mississippi and Arkansas, to observe AI's compatibility with its existing telemedicine program. 

"We have a long history of using telemedicine inside the hospital to help patients," Derick Ziegler, vice president of affiliated integration and west Tennessee operations, added. 

"We are excited about our collaboration with LookDeep to use AI to expand virtual safety, nursing and medical services to support our staff and improve patient care," said DePriest.

THE LARGER TREND

Computational medicine, which includes the use of AI, machine learning and other technologies, has been in development for more than a decade and deployment has accelerated across a variety of healthcare use cases. 

Bringing it to the bedside to enhance patient care is a milestone, however.

With telehealth as an enterprise-wide strategy, creative uses can help inpatient care, according to Mike Brandofino, president and chief operations officer of Caregility, a vendor of telehealth technology and services.

"We have heard from doctors who say that, thanks to virtual rounding, they get more done and see more patients by not having to walk miles through hospital hallways," he told Healthcare IT News in June.

Inpatient telehealth also helps alleviate overburdened and short-staffed clinical teams, "as much as it helps them care for their patients," he said.

To deliver quality care to patients and support hospital staff, "you need to have virtual access to every room that would potentially host a patient."

ON THE RECORD

"By eliminating hardware costs and only charging hospitals per patient-day used, we are able to dramatically drive down the cost of core inpatient video monitoring," said Narinder Singh, CEO and cofounder of LookDeep in the announcement.

"This allows us to expand its use to every patient in the hospital and sets the stage for AI to continuously monitor every patient – systemically tackling safety, clinical productivity and clinical care needs."

Andrea Fox is senior editor of Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.