Sutter Health says Flosonic's wearable ultrasound can save lives in ED
Because sepsis remains the leading cause of hospital death, health systems across the country are adopting new tools to help detect the disease earlier and treat it more effectively.
For example, Sacramento-based Sutter Health witnessed the meaningful benefits of deploying a wearable ultrasound device from Flosonics Medical, which personalizes fluid management in patients with sepsis. Over the past year, Sutter has deployed Flosonics’ devices in multiple departments across its six hospital campuses.
Founded 10 years ago, Ontario-based Flosonics sells a small wireless patch that sticks to a patient’s neck and measures its blood flow in real time. CEO Joe Eibl said the assessment was conducted for less than three minutes and showed how the patient's body responded to the intravenous fluid.
He noted that this device, called Flopatch, is easy to use. EIBL says anyone can use patches at the bedside, whether they are doctors, physician assistants or nurses.
He also noted that fluid overload is one of the most common and expensive challenges in intensive care. This occurs when the patient is administering too much IV fluid, which can lead to serious problems such as pulmonary edema or longer ICU stays.
“The tricky part is that it's not always easy to know who actually needs the fluid, and who isn't always easy. Every patient is different, especially when they're seriously ill, their needs may change quickly. Research shows that one in three patients with sepsis are actually fluid unresponsive, which means the fluid is not helpful and can cause harm,” EIIBL explained.
Dr. John Skovran, director of emergency department medical at Sutter, Oakland, said it was possible to use Flopatch to identify those patients earlier that they were Sutter's gamechangers. He said the device does a great job of solving long-standing problems in fluid response capabilities – it does it in a noninvasive way.
Dr. Skovran noted that over the past year, Sutter has been able to rapidly expand its use of products because nurses can easily integrate it into their workflow.
He explained that the nurse simply “pop it up on the patient’s neck” and the patch was then wirelessly connected to the iPad, where it provided a reading for clinical staff with a threshold of 7 to guide fluid administration. The patch lasts up to a week and can be used throughout the patient's hospitalization.
“The equipment we used before was very cumbersome. They are much more complicated in terms of their physical attachment, how to read and what you have to do. So, in fact, the nurses have never actually seen it because it is basically a very difficult task because it can be used to some extent, but to get a certain culture. It never gets attention,” Dr. Scoveland said.
He added that Flosonics’ tools have seen more uses in a month than devices from years ago.
In his opinion, Flopatch was the first truly influential technology to introduce the emergency department to his emergency department for a long time.
“This is probably the only new technology I've really thought of over the past decade, and I think it's really leading to different outcomes in patient management,” Dr. Scoveland declared.
Photo: (Heidi de Marco/KHN)
